President Joe Biden was flagged as “running out of gas” by a third-party challenger who called out the uncertainty of the 2024 general election, predicting a potential “LBJ moment” from the incumbent.
Middle Eastern hostages and an abysmal economic outlook may readily call up parallels to the doomed 1980 re-election campaign of President Jimmy Carter, but a call out from activist professor and independent presidential candidate Cornel West predicted a greater similarity to 1968.
“I’m not even sure whether I’ll be running against Biden,” the People’s Party turned Green Party then independent White House hopeful told Politico during an interview. “Biden — I think he’s going to have an LBJ moment [and] pull back.”
Speculation that Biden would not make it to the 2024 general election has dominated the entirety of his presidency with concerns ranging from cognitive ability, living past the average American lifespan, and political scandal over alleged influence-peddling during his tenure as vice president.
Now, as the House of Representatives formalized an impeachment inquiry and poll numbers have continued to sour for the resident-in-chief, parallels to 1968 mounted. At the time President Lyndon B. Johnson had suspended his campaign following the New Hampshire primary.
Like now, during that election cycle, another Democrat had embarked on an independent campaign with former Alabama Gov. George Wallace raking in more than 13% of the vote ahead of incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey when he lost by less than 1% to then-former Vice President Richard Nixon.
Currently, environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent run has seen polling slightly higher than that of Wallace after having stepped out of the Democratic Party primary. Similarly, his father, New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, had been a favored candidate after Johnson had stepped aside, only to be assassinated in June of that year.
“I’m just saying that I’m open to those possibilities, given the fluidity of the situation,” West continued on the chances of California Gov. Gavin Newsom or Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer replacing the incumbent as the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential nominee. “He’s running out of gas.”
Both governors have denied their own White House ambitions with Whitmer oft-repeating claims to be seeking higher office while she and Newsom have both been accused of running shadow campaigns to that end.
West spoke negatively of both Biden and former President Donald Trump, calling the former a “milquetoast neoliberal with military adventurism, possibly leading the world toward World War III,” and the latter a “bona fide gangsta, Neo-fascist, Pied Piper leading the country for the second civil war.”
“I’m more concerned about Trump domestically. I’m more concerned about Biden in terms of foreign policy,” he remarked. The activist candidate also decried suggestions that his run could have a negative impact on the outcome, “I don’t accept the spoiler category. A vote for Biden, a vote for Trump is a vote for Biden and a vote for Trump.
“There might be slices of people ‘if I didn’t vote for West, I would have voted for Biden. But that’s not to me, a spoiler. If you’re in a race, and you make a case, and they vote for you, how do you become the spoiler?” he wondered as he spoke to his candidacy being about connecting with the apathetic electorate.
“So much of this campaign really is about trying to touch that 38 percent who don’t vote at all and young people more and more wrestling with cynicism of various sorts,” said West who landed in a virtual tie for fourth with Green Party candidate Jill Stein in a hypothetical general election that saw Trump beat Biden by over 5% with Kennedy in third with 13.4% according to the RealClear Politics average.
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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