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It is natural to view voting in tactical terms. Especially now, when so much of our conception of democracy is wrapped up solely in the act of voting, it is easy to fall into a way of thinking that says the only way to take democracy seriously is not only to vote but also to vote for one of the two major party candidates.
Yet, that is a flawed and narrow way of understanding democracy. There is value in voting, and there is also value in not voting. Either can be an expression of one’s convictions about the sort of society we wish to see, or to not see, in America.
In the 2024 presidential election, I will cast what in political science terms is unfortunately referred to as a “wasted vote.” I will vote for professor Cornel West, but I do not feel that my vote will be wasted in doing so.
I am a longtime Republican (a former Republican nominee for Congress in fact) who feels disaffected from the mainstream Republican Party. Although I disagree with the ad hominem tactics and attitudes of groups like The Lincoln Project, I sympathize with the beleaguered never-Trump wing of the GOP, which feels that Donald Trump must be opposed within the party because of his character and divisiveness, and for the threat he poses to democracy. I cast my vote in the Republican primary for Mike Pence on this basis.
Neither Democratic nor GOP candidate deserves support
Yet, I part company from many of my never-Trump Republican friends in viewing the failures of the Democratic Party and its allied interests as not incomparable to those of the modern GOP.
My grievances stem largely from the political left’s catastrophic misrepresentation of matters of race and policing in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, its inattention to public safety in the context of illegal immigration, its narrow and excessive commitment to lockdowns in the face of COVID-19 (something for which Trump also bears responsibility), and its willingness to mislead the American people about the mental fitness of the sitting president of the United States.
I have little specific grievance with Vice President Kamala Harris other than that she appears to me as a cog in the progressive Democratic wheel. But it is the wheel that I have trouble voting for.
I live in California, where the electoral outcome we can take as settled. That fact affords me the luxury to vote my conscience. Yet, the most notable third-party candidates in this race are more substantive than the major party candidates, and more dignified as well.
That includes Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Though dismissed as a conspiracy theorist, Kennedy delivers a compelling indictment of the Democratic Party establishment and, beyond his criticisms of our lockdown policies (for which I have some sympathy), draws attention to other major issues of concern that Harris and Trump refuse to notice, including the corruption of food safety standards.
Kennedy decided to endorse Trump without thoroughly interrogating the former president’s stolen election claims, his unwillingness to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and the events of Jan. 6, 2021. I believe that endorsement represented Kennedy’s final rebellion against a political party that he feels betrayed him, but he failed to account for the breadth of the anti-democratic actions undertaken by both parties in recent years.
Still, Kennedy has campaigned with respect for the convictions of Democratic, independent and Republican voters, without devolving into ad hominem insults of his opponents. For this, he has my respect.
Cornel West, meanwhile, has received less attention for his independent candidacy than Kennedy has. In any conventional analysis of the political spectrum, it is possible I have less in common with West than I do with any other candidate in the race.
West is avowedly a man of the left. His progressive politics are an agitation to standard liberal Democrats (and anathema to conservative Republicans). If policy were the only factor, West would likely not be a consideration at all for a moderately conservative Republican like myself.
But policy is not the only consideration for me in this election. It shouldn’t be for America, either.
American politics are beset with a crisis in our civic condition and in our understanding of human dignity, and ultimately, with a spiritual crisis in a society that is flailing for a sense of meaning.
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At the root of our crises of institutional credibility and basic political functioning is a tribal-political culture in which our leaders, political parties and media institutions fail to treat opposition and dissent with dignity and empathy.
This bleeds down to the way we treat our neighbors in this age of polarization. We fail, too, in our culture war politics and our petty political gamesmanship, to center our debates around the plight of the poor at home, the suffering abroad and those who are most disadvantaged in society as a result of the shortcomings of not just our policies but also the ethical hollowness of our political culture.
And all of this is in reinforced in our modern age by a way of life that seeks fulfillment through material consumption, through status and glamour, through the glorification of violence and ego in the void of deeper spiritual commitments, through which crass partisan politics rushes to fill the void.
Cornel West sets good example for our democracy
I will cast my ballot in support of West not merely on the basis of his current candidacy but in recognition of the example he has set as both a scholar and activist across a life’s vocation that has sought to elevate the conscience of American society to a plane in which we find deeper meaning − crossing the chasms of our differences to heal the wounds of the vulnerable.
West’s career also is inspiring in the way he has pursued his vocation in the face of political divides.
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West is most recognizable as a voice for social justice and as a leader in the Black community. Yet, he stands out among most others who share that description.
A prodigious scholar (he is the author of at least 20 books and has edited at least 13 more) West’s best known work is a collection of essays, “Race Matters.” Published in 1993, soon after the Rodney King beating and the Los Angeles riots, the moment was ripe for any leader who wanted to make a name for himself by inflaming the passions of racial animus by angrily calling attention to the need for justice.
West, the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary, did marshal a righteous indignation in reviving a call for justice in “Race Matters.” But he also did something much deeper.
In a moment of passion and volatility that was hardly conducive to nuance and an insightful overview of the forces driving Black rage and Black identity in America, West not only acknowledged but humanized the cultural and political contributions of Black liberals and progressives, Black nationalists and even Black conservatives.
His critiques of each of these groups are cutting. Yet, there is not an ounce of meanness in his criticism. West’s analyses of the strengths and weaknesses of these ideological factions in the Black community also were fair and accurate.
He wrote in the original introduction of the book that, “The predictable pitting of liberals against conservatives, Great Society Democrats against self-help Republicans, reinforces intellectual parochialism and political paralysis.”
West asserted that the common flaw of each side is in identifying Black people as a problem to be managed in American society, an attitude that is less than humanizing.
Three decades later, West is still in deep public dialogue with the likes of Glenn Loury, an economist and noted Black conservative intellectual. Two of their conversations can be found on “The Glenn Show,” including one in which West responds to a defense Loury made of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a political pariah among progressive Black Americans:
