American voters feel “impotent and hopeless” as they approach an election where the main choices are a “neo-fascist Pied Piper” (Donald Trump) or “the war criminals of the Democratic Party”, argues independent presidential candidate Cornel West.
West, one of the United States’s pre-eminent philosophers and justice activists, tells host Steve Clemons that President Joe Biden is enabling Israeli genocide and that Israel cannot be secure if “precious Jewish security and safety is predicated on the domination of precious Palestinians”.
West argues that recent talk of a two-state solution is “subterfuge – a refusal to deal with the 700,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank”.
I'm actually kind of glad the fascist mono-party won't allow
thirdsecond parties in their debates. We need to have some debates between West, Stein, and de la Cruz. Let's figure out which of them can really put some meaningful ideas behind the lines like "dismantle the empire" he uses here.I only post this video because it's the first time I've heard a democrat-adjacent person directly call Genocide Joe a war criminal. It was surreal when the largest protest I've seen at my pretty conservative agricultural university was 100+ students chanting that they charge Biden with genocide. Seeing that level of rhetoric trickle up to more and more direct confrontations with power is an interesting trend. I think that's also where the only value of having someone like West/Stein/de la Cruz in a debate with Biden would be, the kind of niche that Mike Gravel had. I want Biden to have to squirm under direct accusations of genocide and explain them for a few hours. Not because I think it would change the minds of a single Blue MAGA demon, but because the stress of it might give him a stroke. The last time he had to debate someone his eye exploded and I think there's a real moment for anti-imperialist praxis if someone pushes him too far without him being able to escape.
A debate between the three of them which also doesn't include crank candidates like RFK Jr/Phillips/Williamson would be interesting to show a clear distinction between socialism and liberalism. If someone's a judas goat it should be exposed well before they're elected and wearing an Israeli flag like a cape on the roof of their office.
HA! Well, sure: I'd love to see Biden be confronted as well. At any and every opportunity. I hope people keep doing that in his campaign speeches and everywhere he goes, at least from the audience and surrounding environment if they can't get closer. But I honestly don't think it's ever going to be allowed on the controlled debate stage where these fascists mumble amongst themselves about how much cruelty they can put into the murder of black and brown people, and it's ensured that that is the limit of the "debate". Hope I'm wrong, of course. But the Democrats have already made it clear they're not having primary debates, and they've already ensured that Biden is running unopposed in several states. So I don't think there's likely to be much hope that someone's going to explode his eyeball (or even better, his black, rotten heart) from behind one of the official podiums.
It's weird because they used to debate the third party candidates, but I think the org that ran the debates in those days got them taken away for being too reasonable and nonpartisan.
The League of Women Voters ran the presidential debates up until sometime in the 1980s, I believe. My understanding is that the major reason they got kicked out and the Democrats and Republicans formed their own "bipartisan" corporation to run them is that the LoWV refused to exclude "third parties" and refused to accept the huge list of conditions the liberals wanted to agree on, such as all the stuff that they'd agree would never be brought up on stage (you know, the monumental pile of political ideas and ideology that "both parties" agree on).