Today I read a post on Facebook in a group of which I am a member. It is a leftist group, and presumably the members are leftists. In this post, the writer excoriates the “left” for sectional squabbles, for caring more about “their own little piece of ideology” than any other issue. The “left” is compared to the supposedly equivalent “right”. Whereas, the writer proposes, the right may have factions that fight each other for ideological supremacy; they will come together to fight their common foes, while the left will simply sit and squabble with each other over “petty grievances” while refusing to support a certain candidate in the upcoming presidential election.
The reason for this vitriol? The refusal of the left (do not read “democrats”, but leftists) to support a candidate who has abandoned not one but two parties in nearly as many months. The candidate in question is Cornel West. The writer goes on to say that if we do not forget our squabbles and vote for Dr. West, we are tacitly endorsing the ills the left fights against. Not only that, but we are also guilty of not really supporting the things we claim to. The author does not simply imply this; it is explicitly stated. We care nothing for the poor, nothing for the freedoms that are under siege, nothing for the imprisoned, nothing for the planet, war, or justice. In fact, it is argued that we care nothing for anything except the parties we support and the ideology to which we adhere.
No doubt the writer thinks that he is taking the correct tack, but he has ignored several things that disprove his conclusions. The political left is in no way comparable to the right. The right, all of them, including Democrats, have zero problems taking money from corporations and the elite. They are well funded by people who are the very same people who are causing the problems we have today,while Greens, Socialists, Communists, and others struggle every step of the way to make changes without resorting to giving up their defining tenet, their opposition to the status quo, and their financiers. The writer reduces the differences among the varied leftist parties to ideological squabbles or “purity tests”. I would argue that several leftist parties have come together at various times. In our lifetimes and in recent memory, we find examples of this fact. Senator Sanders drew support from many quarters, including actual leftist parties as well as Democrats, when he launched his bid for the presidency before he decided that the status quo was really not as bad as he had led voters to believe in all his previous statements. They would have continued their support had the candidate in question not left them high and dry while he abandoned his former rhetoric of being anti-duopoly, anti-war and pro-worker in order to perpetuate the very system against which he had railed. They also came together to support a common candidate in the last election cycle. Howie Hawkins was not only the Green candidate but also the Socialist candidate, with his running mate being a member of the Socialist Party and he being a Green. While there were definitely problems with this candidate, it was not on account of leftists not cooperating. It was rather a case of a poor candidate who truthfully should never have been supported by either party, which fact itself belies the charge that the left only holds out for a “pure” candidate. But such is the lot of the left. We are left with a very small slate of committed, selfless people to run. We do not have the luxury of choosing a candidate who is “pure”. There are definitely compromises to be made, and they are made all of the time. The fact that the writer chooses to ignore this fact does not make it any less true.
Another way the two groups are not comparable is that the political right holds the power to make and enforce all election and campaign laws. They even have the power to change the laws whenever they think they need to. They use this power to make sure any challenge coming from the left has as difficult a time as possible. There are 50 different states with 50 different sets of rules that any third party or independent candidate must follow in order to obtain ballot access, while neither major party must do any of this. In addition to this, the two parties control the Commission on Presidential Debates, which is a private corporation and not a government office or entity. They can and do change the criteria at will that allow third parties to have the chance to even question them face to face and put forth their own platforms in a public arena. Free of the constraints they've heaped on third parties, they are free to indulge themselves, thwarting the possible loss of any of their power as third parties scramble to even be heard.
And just to throw a cherry on top of this s**tshow in the form of another tactic, they deploy an extra hurdle in front of the already beleaguered leftists. The Democrats are constantly referred to as the left by Democrats and GOP alike. Why do you suppose that is? Democrats and the GOP, who supposedly hold opposite positions on almost every single issue, agree that the Democrats are the left? Could it possibly be to give the appearance of leftist thought without actually being leftist? To give the impression that you do not need to go outside the two major parties in order to find people who will fight for leftist ideas? To be controlled opposition? The argument that Greens, Socialists, Communists, and other committed leftists bear the entire responsibility for the situation in which they find themselves at every turn is a false narrative and intellectually dishonest.
Finally, perhaps the most salient reason the left will not unite behind Dr. West is that barring an improbable collaboration between Dr. West and RFK, it is extremely unlikely that Dr. West will be on more than a few ballots, if any at all. You cannot vote for a candidate who is not on the ballot, or has not abided by rules set for write-in candidates, in the states that do allow write-ins. (Yes, states do have rules for write-ins, and some even forbid write-ins) As noted above, Dr. West just left a party that already has ballot access in 18 states. They have done this work; Dr. West has not, and was given a gift by the Green Party in the form of an actual platform and a group of people who are willing to go out and campaign for him. They are ready to do the arduous work of obtaining ballot access. Polling people, collecting signatures where mandatory, and making sure the rules with which they are saddled already is all but impossible without a group of people who are dedicated to this effort. The Greens were ready to give him not only the 18 states they have already spent countless manhours, resources, and time on but also provide the groundwork needed in every state to acquire more ballot lines. Without this infrastructure, the task of obtaining ballot access, which is absolutely necessary in order to even have a chance of getting any votes at all, is a very daunting task, barring a candidate who can self finance the effort. All of this says to leftists that Dr. West will not only not be an available option, but that he has wasted all of the resources they have already devoted to his candidacy and, just as importantly, that he is not a serious candidate for election. All of this says that he is not in it to win it, but only to give himself a chance for his voice to be heard to a greater extent than otherwise would be possible. To insist that any leftists who refuse to waste time supporting a non-candidate, much less believe that he will actually be on ballots in order to vote for him, is one of three things: hopelessly uninformed, willfully blind, or wholly disingenuous.
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