Political activist and 2024 presidential candidate Dr. Cornel West has said the Democratic Party is "beyond redemption."
West launched his presidential campaign under the People's Party platform in June but is now running as the Green Party candidate.
The presidential candidate was responding to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who said the Democrats must "bring the entire progressive community to defeat Trump or whoever the Republican nominee will be [and] support Biden” over the weekend.
West said Senator Sanders was "consistent" with his beliefs.
“You know, he said that all along, and I can understand the argument. I think it’s a plausible argument. I just don’t think it’s a persuasive one,” West said during an interview with The Hill's Rising. “I think that the argument he’s making means that there’s never any possibility for breaking from the corporate duopoly, that there’s never any possibility of trying to speak to the needs of poor working people.”
West slammed the Democratic party for avoiding “poverty and intense police brutality.”
“So I think in many ways Brother Bernie is making a plausible argument, but I think deep down in his heart he knows that the Democratic Party has no fundamental intention of speaking to the needs of poor people and working people,” he continued. “They are dominated by the corporate wing, they’re dominated by the militarists when it comes to foreign policy, and that he and AOC and the others are going to be, in a certain sense, window dressing at worst and, at best, people to appeal to every four years.”
West concluded by saying the Democratic Party is "beyond redemption at this point," claiming the party doesn't "seriously" speak to the needs of poor and working-class people.
“I am running for truth and justice as a presidential candidate for the People’s Party to reintroduce America to the best of itself – fighting to end poverty, mass incarceration, ending wars and ecological collapse, guaranteeing housing, health care, education and living wages for all!” West wrote in June, encouraging supporters to visit his website.
West, 70, is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theology, where he teaches courses on classics, philosophy, politics, cultural theory, literature, and music, according to his website. An author of 20 books and editor of 13, he is the former Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University.
