In 2016, Democrats ignored Green Party candidate Jill Stein for the entire general election. After all, Stein was pulling down less than 2% of the vote — no need to worry, right?
As it happens, Stein took more votes than the difference between Clinton and Trump in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. This handed Trump a narrow victory in all three states and the White House.
In 2024, Democrats have vowed not to let that scenario repeat itself. But it’s not going to be easy. Joe Biden is being challenged from the left by academic, author, civil rights icon, and celebrity leftist philosopher Cornel West and on the right by West Virginia’s gadfly moderate Sen. Joe Manchin and the No Labels Party.
West has excited a segment of the left that has been bitterly disappointed by Joe Biden’s performance on issues like civil rights, income redistribution, the climate, and voting rights. So far, he’s not pulling much support.
But he’s running at 4%, and it’s a good bet he won’t be pulling many Republican votes from Donald Trump.
Naturally, Biden stand-ins have already begun to try to tear West down. And sure enough, the champion of “tax the rich” is discovered to owe more than half a million dollars in back taxes.
In a recent interview with Semafor, West maintained that “we’ve got to have taxes that are higher, much higher”—while he told New York Post that first son Hunter Biden’s now-lapsed plea deal to misdemeanor tax charges amounted to “a little tap on the wrist,” especially compared to the penalties the spawn of less powerful families face.
But materials filed in Mercer County, New Jersey, where West owns a home in the upper-crust college town of Princeton, and in Los Angeles—the location of his personal attorney’s office—reveal a second, secret motif to his hugely lucrative professional life: a failure to pay his own taxes.
These documents show a total of $543,778.78 in outstanding federal tax liens against the professor, activist, and writer.
West is a polemicist who is very good at riling up left-wing audiences by railing against capitalists. It’s not likely that this news will lead to a drop in support. So he will soldier on all the way to November 2024, where Biden’s team will have a devil of a time tamping down West’s vote totals and prevent him from handing the election to the Republican.
The problem of Joe Manchin presents a different set of challenges. The No Labels Party is raising an incredible amount of money — $70 million just to get on the ballot in all 50 states. Polls show that if No Labels entered a presidential candidate in the race, a “moderate” alternative to both Biden and Trump would draw 20% of the vote — and hand the presidency to Trump.
But Manchin, who has yet to indicate he wants to run for president, is also up for re-election in West Virginia for a fourth term. Despite West Virginia being one of the reddest of red states, the 75-year-old Manchin remains one of the most popular politicians in the state’s history.
And he has recently raised his national profile by being the primary thorn in the side of Joe Biden in terms of holding up the president’s radical agenda. But Manchin has also said he won’t play the “spoiler” in 2024 and won’t run unless he has a realistic shot at winning.
Politico quotes close advisors to Biden who say that “they take the group and leaders like Manchin at their word that they don’t want to play spoiler for Trump and that if they don’t have a path to 270 Electoral College votes, they won’t go through with a run.”
History shows us that once the presidential bug bites, the disease is terminal. Manchin can always find a way to justify a run for the presidency, even if he didn’t have a chance to win.
The 2024 race will be a different race than 2016 and 2020. For Trump, the dynamics of running while under indictment would be a challenge no candidate has ever had to face before. Perhaps when the election rolls around, there will be no Biden and no Trump anyway. And the electorate will have forgotten all about Cornel West and Joe Manchin.
Or perhaps if Trump and Biden drop out for various reasons, a third-party candidate might be a serious alternative.
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