West/GP campaign blog (1)
I’ve been involved with campaigns like this since Nader ’96.
Things are going too smoothly at the moment. Since the Hedges initiative of June 12 (which resulted in Cornel throwing in his lot with the Green Party) there has been nothing but good vibes … significant good news daily!
Most surprises, to date, have been positive:
https://www.transcend.org/tms/2023/06/heeding-cornel-wests-cri-de-coeur/
Friday the first mention in Counterpunch:
Yesterday an announcement by Howie Hawkins that he’ll be meeting with Cornel on Wednesday night and most likely will be endorsing the campaign (rather than running a competing campaign for the nomination).
These things rarely go this smoothly. Surely a plethora of miserable snags and frustrations await.
Anyway . . .
Every project or campaign needs a core group of burning souls who pay concentrated attention 16 hours a day. In that respect we’ve got Chris Hedges and Jill Stein on fire! Jill announced that the petition drive coordinator will be Rick Lass, who got us onto 45 ballots in 2016.
Cornel has been interviewed at least once every day. Among them all, this one at Aljazeera might be the best to publicize. Being time-delimited, Cornel was relatively succinct (he can go on sometimes!) and the key overarching points were covered well by the sympathetic host:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGrUWCMPyIs
Watching the Dems and Reps. The perfect storm for our campaign would be Trump out, Biden in. We could finally get that 5% of the vote third parties lust for (it gives the party millions of dollars in federal funding for the following election cycle; and that achievement gives the party a special gravitas). A large number of people would love to not have to vote for Biden. If the Republican is Trump they’ll hold their nose and suffer to vote D. Few loathe DeSantis to the same extent. On the other hand, if the Dems jettison Biden and group behind Gavin Newson, we’re toast.
