We think the left has the numbers in the US, the left has the best policies in the US. So why, year after year, can we just not seem to get it together?
If, in frustration, like us, you've wondered that repeatedly, you got the answer last week if you were paying attention.
Cornel West. The shuck and jive artist still intends to run for the office of president. Remember, though, not as The People's Party's presidential candidate. Nope. And he's no longer trying to win the Green Party's presidential nomination. No. He announced last week that he was going to be running as an independent candidate.
In case you're thinking we've somehow slanted that, here's THE NATION's Jeet Heer on the events:
West is having a hard time settling on a political party to serve as a vehicle for his ambitions to reenergize the left. He started off as a candidate for the minuscule People’s Party (which had little or no ability to get a presidential candidate on the ballot), then moved to the Green Party (which has had a record of being able to secure ballot access in a critical mass of states), and finally, on Thursday, announced that he is simply running as an independent.
He doesn't call Cornel a shuck and jive artist but then he wouldn't, he's concerned about decorum and we don't give a damn.
Especially when it comes to a fake ass.
The writers and actors strikes allowed us a lot of time this summer to cover things other than scripted entertainment programs which means we spent way too much time covering Cornel West and his fake assery.
You might have thought that Cornel's latest stunt would allow others to catch up to us. You would be wrong.
Instead of hearing real critiques about the garbage Cornel was pushing off on America we heard complaints about . . . The Green Party.
Over on THE VANGUARD, where Zac's more gassy than usual (can he get through a broadcast without burping repeatedly -- is all that gas the result of his very noticeable weight gain?), Gavin was pursing his lips and whining, "I've been increasingly frustrated with the whole third party movement now. Basically since 2020 when the Green Party debacle with Howie Hawkins went down and they kind of turned up their noses at Jesse Venture [. . .]" We'll come back to his brat act.
But let's note another whiny little brat, Kit Cabello who used HARD LENS MEDIA to blubber, "The Green Party seems to be a complete and utter disaster. Were we being screwed from the very beginning because truly how incompetent is the Green Party?"
Did reality not matter at all? Was the whole thing just a joke and us the sour pusses who refused to laugh along?
THE VANGUARD boys, for those who've forgotten, saw their programs raison d etre electing Marianne Williamson as the Democratic Party's presidential nominee. As we noted here months ago, Zac even fessed up to that on air. Marianne floundered and continues to. All the sudden Cornel's in the race and THE VANGUARD boys can't stop spit-polishing Cornel's knob -- excuse us, Dr West's knob.
Like Katie Halper and so many others, THE VANGUARD boys couldn't stop lying. They kept calling him the Green Party's presidential nominee when he wasn't. When he dropped out of the race last week, he was one of three declared candidates for the Green Party's presidential nomination. They won't select their nominee until summer of next year when they hold their party convention.
This was a basic fact that YOUTUBERS lied about over and over.
But little nitwits on YOUTUBE refused to accept that basic fact and are still refusing.
Kit Cabello was convinced it was a conspiracy -- "The Peter Daou effect!" Peter Dauo had recently been named Cornel's campaign manager after Jill Stein repeatedly failed in that role. (Last week, she insisted, it was always going to be an interim post.) Peter Daou troubled Jimmy Dore and many others when he came on the campaign.
Why?
He was a Democrat!
Wasn't Jimmy at one point?
Peter soured on the Democratic Party in 2008. That's when the real walk away began although YOUTUBE Cornel fans tried to act as though it was when Bernie Sanders lost the 2016 Democratic Party nomination.
They don't know their history as usual.
In 2008, the DNC rigged the nomination so that it went to Barack Obama and not Hillary Clinton. There were many shenanigans. This included the DNC insisting that Michigan and Florida -- primaries Barack lost to Hillary -- would not be counted. At first, when that nonsense started, elder journalist Diane Rehm rightly used her NPR program to push back on that insisting that there was no way they could put aside the results of those two states. However, per a Diane staffer, Diane fell in line when she was threatened with a loss of certain prominent Democrats as guests.
There was also a very sexist campaign against Hillary which included very sexist remarks from Barack, his flipping her off (to cheers from his fan base) and so much more.
There was, for example, Texas. Who won that primary?
It's a key question and maybe the YOUTUBERS aren't really stupid, maybe they're just damn hypocrites.
If you really don't know, Hillary carried Texas. But she didn't get the votes for Texas, those went to Barack. Explain that. (And please note, we have seen the tape of the woman over the Lovefield caucus telling Hillary supporters that they could go on home, that signing in was all they needed to do, when in fact they needed to remain in order to vote but they believed her and left.)
There's a whole history there and Peter Daou observed it and couldn't believe the dishonesty.
That's when he tries to power through it for 2009 before he slowly wakes up to reality.
But they don't know his history and they really don't know him. Which is how you get idiots like Kit thinking this has all been some secret conspiracy carried out in the shadows by Peter.
There was an actual conspiracy and no one ever wanted to talk about that. We did. We wrote about it repeatedly. But we were so hoping that others would start addressing it as well.
Didn't happen.
Instead, we got Gavin, last week, gushing, "Yes, I love Dr. West."
What do you say to that besides, "Ick!"
It's getting close to twenty years since the two of us wrote our oft repeated remark, "We don't fall in love with politicians -- we're not that pathetic."
Yet sadly some people are, some people like Gavin are.
And their love prompted them to yet again excuse Cornel instead of holding him accountable for his actions. Instead, Kit and Gavin (and others) blamed the Green Party.
Gavin whimpered, "I've been increasingly frustrated with the whole third party movement now. Basically since 2020 when the Green Party debacle with Howie Hawkins went down and they kind of turned up their nose at Jesse Ventura who was another candidate I thought could get them to 5%."
First off, what debacle with Howie Hawkins? You mean when Dario Hunter refused to campaign -- couldn't even manage one Tweet a week -- and then starts spreading lies about how Dr Margaret Flowers conspired to give Howie the nomination? Those were lies from a lazy ass who couldn't campaign because he was so lazy. Howie was nominated (and voted as the nominee) at the 2020 Green Party convention.
If the 'debacle' is supposed to refer to the turnout, he got 0.26% of the popular vote. Not very impressive, no. But in 2012, Jill Stein only got 0.36% of the popular vote so let's not pretend it was all that astounding or surprising.
Second, frustrated with the whole third party movement? But you voted Green in at least 2016 and 2020 that we know of. So why the pissing of the panties and the stomping of the feet now?
Third, "They kind of turned their nose at Jesse Ventura who was another candidate I thought could get them to 5%"? You thought that of Jesse and of Cornel? You really are stupid.
But, more to the point, stop pretending you believe in democracy. We've already called out Jimmy Dore for this Jesse Ventura nonsense. Like Jimmy, Gavin has a hissy fit that Jesse was not the Green Party's 2020 nominee for president.
Why?
Because, like Jimmy, Gavin doesn't really believe in democracy.
He's upset, when his guy (Bernie Sanders) is screwed out of the nomination due to backstage planning but he's okay with rigging a nomination if it means his guy wins.
See Jesse didn't get to be the nominee for a number of reasons -- chief among them, he didn't run.
He refused to run for it. He said, publicly, that if they'd give it to him, he'd accept it.
Oh, how kind of him, right?
Political parties aren't supposed to give out nominations. Their members are supposed to vote on people running for the nomination.
Jesse didn't get it and Gavin still doesn't.
Don't pretend you're for democracy when you have a hissy fit that someone who wouldn't even campaign for the nomination didn't get it.
And this goes to the backdoor deals that were always a part of Cornel's campaigns.
As we noted long ago, Cornel went on BLACK POWER MEDIA after he gave back the nomination from The People's Party and gave an interview that everyone wants to pretend didn't take place.
In that interview, he revealed that Chris Hedges, his friend, came up with the idea. It was originally that he and Chris would be on the same ticket. And Chris spoke to The People's Party and they were fine with that. Then it changed because Mrs. Hedges told Chris he wasn't running.
So it was Cornel all by himself. And it was Chris, in the press, pretending that he had no role in this process and interviewing Cornel about how it came about. That write up never noted that Chris was the intermediary who secured the nomination for Cornel.
And then with the Green Party? Chris and Jill Stein (some say Ajuma Baraka as well) tried to strong-arm the Green Party leadership into giving Cornel the nomination. The party stood firm against that -- and rightly so.
When he couldn't steal the nomination, Cornel and Jill decided to present him as the nominee -- even though he was not -- because they knew that would scare people off. As usual, they didn't know dookie.
And not one but two people declared their intent to run while Cornel was claiming to be the party's nominee. And that number was only going to grow because real Greens -- not YOUTUBE Greens such as Kit and Gavin -- were offended that a non-Green (Cornel) was trying to steal their party's nomination.
They were right to be offended and Gavin needs to clarify whether he's a hypocrite or whether he just didn't grasp all of this?
The whole thing was sick and pathetic. It was also a joke.
Over at RISING, Bri-Bri Joy Gray was trying to get attention for her breasts by sporting a cleavage revealing blouse. Problem was she really has no breasts. So it didn't help to wear a blouse slashed across the top of where her boobs should have been when she had no cleavage to sport in the first place. As always, her mind was as empty as her bra. That explains why the supposedly educated woman kept using "independents" over and over when, often times, she actually meant swing voters. There is a difference as poli sci majors know.
It also explains why she and her co-host, citing Jesse Ventura winning a race for governor of Minnesota decades ago, was due to the state being so racially diverse.
Huh?
Check the census. Minnesota is 82.6% White (and they list Latinos seperately so don't think for a moment that includes White Latinos or White Hispanics). Yes, Bri-Bri is obsessed with all things White Valley Girl (we recall those awful 'news' segments she used to do on SEX AND THE CITY) but we'd think that even she could grasp that a state that is 82.6% White is not a racially diverse state. We would think that but last week she proved us wrong.
We've always pointed out that she's the equivalent of a crossover artist in music, someone who could climb the pop charts but not the soul charts, and that's because White people like her and see her as their kind of folk. Why? Because when a state is over 80% White, Bri-Bri will rush forward to insist that it's very racially diverse. In what world? In the world where your job consists solely of reassuring White people and maintaining the status quo. That is, after all, why RISING continues to employ her.
And as she and her guest host chuckled over the whole Cornel issue, laughed on camera, it was clear that Bri-Bri had long ago internalized was what required of her and that she was bound and determined to deliver it.
It wasn't that long ago that Bri-Bri was chatting up Cornel West on Sabby Sabs show. Last week, while others had to ask questions to empty air, Sabby got to question Cornel. She asked him from the start why he left the race for the Green Party's presidential nomination?
Cornel West: As things went on, it was clear, you've got a lot of internal dynamics in the Green Party. You've got four debates among the Green Party -- presidential debates. You have to go to a variety of different events in different states to do that -- in addition to the web seminars. And then you have to somehow connect what you're doing in the campaign with the Green Party and it just became just too cumbersome -- too cumbersome -- too cumbrance in that regard.
Read over it again, if you need to.
It's not Peter Daou's fault. It's not the Green Party's fault. It's fake ass, lazy ass Cornel. He wanted the nomination, he just didn't want to do the work required.
That's your great hope, that's the guy who was going to deliver 5%? If he can't even do the bare minimum in the primaries, what the hell do you think he'd accomplish in a general election?
Over at Jimmy Dore's YOUTUBE show, it was hit or miss. "This is actually a step backwards," Craig Pasta rightly observed. Then Jimmy wanted to seize credit (as he always does) which led to him insisting that his announcement (after his controversial interview with Cornel) made him some sort of a prophet: "Cornel West basically just quit the race."
Actually, Jimmy, if you paid attention to what Cornel said to Sabby, the truth was, he was never in the race because he was never up to the race.
One of the few who actually has the right to brag is Renee Johnston. She questioned Cornel's run from the start. Appearing yesterday on BLACK POWER MEDIA with Dr Jared Ball, she again addressed the issue of Cornel.
Renee Johnston: So what's wild for me is -- and this is the one part that people are really not talking about -- and this is the part that's most frustrating for me -- is that when he first announced that he was going to run NPP [The People's Party], we were all like, 'Did you not do your research? Did you not know who these people are? You've been involved with them for all these years, what's going on, what happened? What made you make this decision? Come to find out, it was phone calls and conversations and he just decided to run for president. So okay. Okay, he changes his mind because after he starts hearing different things -- phone calls and conversations -- now he decides he's going to go do something else, now he's going to go run Green Party. Okay. Everyone gets excited -- running Green Party! -- people were, as you know, really unhappy with me for not jumping on the bandwagon and being really excited that he was going to run Green Party. But my question at the time had been the same question when he initially started which was: "What is the plan?" You're going into this, how exactly are we going to move forward for this to become something that is viable and reasonable and action that works towards improving material conditions of working people? People didn't like that question. Okay, no problem. So now, fast forward -- and all of this -- I will remind everybody -- has happened in four months. Not like we're talking a super long amount of time, four months this is all transpiring. So now it's 'we're not really comfortable with the Green Party, there's some issues with the ballot access issue, this idea of having to run within the party as well as to run an independent campaign at the same time simultaneously, the money, yada yada yada. Now we're going to run independent.' So now you're making a third choice because you didn't properly analyze your first two choices? Now we're going to choice three and we still have yet to have an answer of what exactly are you going to do? How are you going to make this work? What is your plan?
As Renee points out, he was never been able to answer that question.
