With the announcement that the eccentric activist and intellectual Cornel West is standing for president, one wonders if Sleepy Joe will have any serious competition in the Democratic primaries.
The African-American intellectual who draws on traditions no less varied than Marxism, Christianity and transcendentalism, announced in a video on Twitter: “I have decided to run for truth and justice, which takes the form of running for president of the United States as a candidate for the People’s Party.”
Also announced is the environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr (son of Bobby, nephew of John) and the author and “Spiritual Leader” Marianne Williamson.
According to a recent CNN poll, RFK only has support from 20 per cent of Democratic or Democratic-leaning voters. The mystical surname must count for something though – 64 per cent said they would consider supporting him. Marianne Williamson is way down the pecking order with a mere eight per cent in support of the self-help author.
The poor calibre of the competition got The Hound thinking, what happens if a standing president runs for re-election unopposed in his (or her) own party? If the primaries don’t matter a jot, and since the Constitution says nothing about how a presidential candidate must be selected, do both parties still go through the formalities of holding such laborious primaries?
Technically, the incumbent president will still “run” in the primaries, with their name on the ballot and a certain number of delegates from each state being assigned to them based on the amount of the popular vote they get. Yes, the great mechanism of party politics will still be engaged even if the incumbent is a shoo-in.
The most recent example of an incumbent president running for a second term with almost no opposition was Barack Obama in 2012. After his only real competitor Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race, Obama won 100 per cent of the delegates from each state. Even still, Obama’s percentage of the national popular primary vote proved to be the lowest of an incumbent president since George H. W. Bush narrowly defeated Pat Buchanan in the 1992 GOP primary.
On the other side of the political aisle, Trump is still leading in the polls but has at least a semi-serious competitor in Ron DeSantis. Although the Florida governor’s campaign launch on Twitter was marred by technical glitches and has proved to be a bit socially awkward, he has the support and financial resources to give Trump a real challenge.
Other candidates who have declared for the Republican candidacy are Nikki Haley (the only woman), Mike Pence, Ryan Binkley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Chris Christie, Doug Burgum, Larry Elder, Asa Hutchinson, Perry Johnson and Tim Scott.
The profusion of random longshots is, for now, consigned to the Grand Old Party. But at least they may have a serious battle for the nomination. The Democrats, on the other hand, have an incumbent sleepwalking to victory.
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