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      Cornel West, Dropping Green Party, Will Run as an Independent

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      Cornel West, the left-wing academic and third-party presidential candidate, said on Thursday that he would not seek the Green Party’s nomination for president, running instead as an independent.The West campaign gave little explanation for the move, which appeared counterproductive to his goal of getting his name on ballots nationwide, but noted his desire not to be constrained by a party platform and the complexities of the Green Party’s nominating process.“The best way to challenge the entrenched system is by focusing 100 percent on the people, not on the intricacies of internal party dynamics,” his campaign said in a statement.In a text message, Mr. West added: “I am a jazz man in politics and the life of the mind who refuses to play only in a party band!”The decision is likely to be a welcome one for Democrats, who have in the past fought to keep Green Party candidates off state ballots. The Democratic Party is facing the prospect of a 2024 election in which multiple high-profile third-party candidates are on the ballot, and are likelier to sway voters away from Joseph R. Biden than from a Republican challenger.Although Mr. West remains a candidate, he will now have to navigate the complex and time-consuming project of qualifying for the ballot in individual states, without the support of the Green Party.Prominent Democrats such as David Axelrod, the former Obama strategist, and Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, have criticized Mr. West for running, warning that he risks enabling a Republican victory. Even some longtime allies on the left outside of the Democratic Party, like Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, have said that the stakes of the 2024 election have led them to support Mr. Biden.Mr. West, a best-selling author, would have been the highest-profile candidate the Green Party had fielded in a presidential election since Ralph Nader, whose candidacy many Democrats still blame for Vice President Al Gore’s loss to George W. Bush in 2000.The number of votes received by the party’s 2016 nominee, Jill Stein, in three battleground states would have been enough for Hillary Clinton to defeat Donald Trump in the election — although exit polls in one of the states, Michigan, found that only a quarter of Ms. Stein’s voters said they would otherwise have voted for Ms. Clinton.When Mr. West announced his candidacy in June, he said he intended to run for the nomination of the People’s Party, a minor party run by veterans of Mr. Sanders’s political organization. In an interview last week, Mr. West cited the Green Party’s superior ballot access as one reason for his switch.“The main thing is, they had assets in one state,” he said of the People’s Party. The Green Party was ultimately able to get on the ballot in 30 states in 2020, including three of the eight most competitive battleground states.In a statement released after Mr. West’s announcement, the Green Party’s steering committee said it was “surprised” by the decision. The committee thanked the West campaign for the “significant resources” it had invested in its ballot access campaigns.Those campaigns will continue, the committee said, along with the search for “prospective presidential candidates who can run strong campaigns that will underscore our uncompromising commitment to people, planet, and peace.”The process of qualifying for the ballot varies widely from state to state, but often requires gathering thousands of signatures. Legal challenges are common. The Green Party faced lawsuits in four states in 2020.Peter Daou, Mr. West’s campaign manager, said that the West campaign had weighed these likely complications against other factors, such as the Green Party’s highly decentralized nominating process.“You have to consider the pros and cons, and he did,” he said. “And he came down on the side of wanting to be 100 percent laser-focused on people as opposed to the party process.”In an interview before Mr. West’s announcement, Mr. Nader, who ran for president as an independent again in 2004 and 2008, said he was skeptical of the Green Party’s ability to adequately support a presidential candidacy. “The Green Party has a lot of organizing to do,” he said.But an independent candidacy, Mr. Nader said, came with far more hurdles. “The Green Party has an identity,” he said, noting that the party was also on numerous ballots already. “If you’re going to do it independent, you have to be an organizational genius as well as a great speechmaker. And you’ve got to raise a lot of money.” More

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      Kevin McCarthy Surprised Us All

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      Gail Collins: I didn’t think I’d be saying this, Bret, but we’ve dodged a shutdown. It’s a stupendous moment for Kevin McCarthy. Now if he gets tossed out as House speaker by the right wing, he’ll go down in history as the guy who sacrificed his career for the common good. As opposed to the best-possible previous scenario: the boring career pol who was too scared to keep the government running.What’s your reaction?Bret Stephens: Cutting billions in funding for Ukraine was a shame, but I’m guessing the aid will be restored to Kyiv pretty soon. Otherwise, it’s a vast relief that the government will stay open. And, of course, watching someone like Matt Gaetz get politically humiliated is always pleasing.Gail: And there was Gaetz, on cue, announcing Sunday that he would try to remove McCarthy from the speakership. Lord knows it’s been a long trek, listening to the Republicans’ constant yelping about deficit spending. Is it fair to point out that the national debt rose $7.8 trillion during the Trump administration?Bret Stephens: Not fair at all, Gail. Everything that happened when Trump was president was so perfect, so beautiful.OK, I’m kidding. One of my many laments about Trump is that he spent like a sailor on land and governed like a drunk at sea. I wish this would count against him with G.O.P. primary voters, but the truth is that the average Republican isn’t all that eager to really slash government spending, even if they say they don’t like the government. I think Trump intuitively understood this, which is why attacks from Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley aren’t making a dent in Trump’s poll numbers.Which reminds me: Your thoughts on last week’s Republican presidential debate? Whom did you dislike the least?Gail: I suspect this is a setup to get me to praise your fave, Nikki Haley.Bret: Not a setup. An … invitation.Gail: And hey, I can’t argue that she wasn’t the sanest of the group. Along with Chris Christie, the Republican Republicans love to hate.Haley lightly criticized Trump’s performance as president, and after the debate was over, he called her a “birdbrain.”You know, I have this tiny hope that the New Hampshire Republican voters will exercise a little independence and give her the top primary vote and an early lift. But kinda worried Christie will be in there too, dividing the sanity caucus.Bret: A great point. Christie should get out now and throw his support behind Haley. The only reason he got in the race in the first place was to chuck spears at Trump. It hit the wrong Donald — Duck, not Trump — and now all Christie is doing is dividing the anti-Trump field. I also wish Mike Pence would recognize reality and tuck back into bed with his wife of 38 years. That would give Haley a fighting chance to further destroy Vivek Ramaswamy and replace DeSantis as the most plausible Republican alternative to Trump. But I have to admit, my hopes of Trump not being the nominee are dwindling fast.Gail: OK, New Hampshire Republicans, are you listening? Counting on you for a primary miracle.Bret: Speaking of Trump crushing his opponents, I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw that Washington Post-ABC News poll last week, giving Trump a 10-point lead over Joe Biden in a head-to-head matchup. I realize it might be an outlier, but I don’t understand why no serious Democrat is willing to challenge Biden for the nomination. Help me out here.Gail: The poll, if accurate, is a cry of crankiness from middle-of-the-roaders who wanted a more exciting candidate. Still, the only reason for a loyal Democrat to oppose Biden’s nomination is that he’s too old. I think he’s been a darned good president. And while I do wish he had stepped aside, I’m certainly not going to have any trouble whatsoever arguing he’s the better option.This is when I get to point out that Trump is 77 and in worse physical condition than Biden. And has been saying some very weird things lately — even for him.Bret: Biden’s main problem isn’t that he’s too old. There are plenty of sharp, fit and healthy 80-year-olds. His problem is that he looks and sounds feeble. Trump may be awful and insane and nearly as old as Biden, but one thing he isn’t is low energy. And even if you think Biden is the best president since F.D.R., or Abe Lincoln for that matter, he’s got a 41.5 percent approval rating, a vice president who’s even more unpopular than he is and major political liabilities on immigration, crime and inflation. Also now Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is hinting that he’ll run as a third-party candidate in the general election, which would be on top of Biden’s Cornel West problem.Gail: Thank you for giving me a chance to howl about third-party candidates, who have no possibility of winning but every possibility of screwing up the majority’s right to choose.Bret: I suppose that, in theory, Kennedy could subtract a lot of votes from Trump, since both of them draw from the same well of looney-tune conspiracy theories. But my guess is that, as a Democrat, Biden would be the bigger loser from an independent Kennedy campaign. And if West persists in running, drawing progressive and Black voters away from Biden, then the chances of a Trump victory grow even larger.Gail: But we were talking about President Joe …Bret: If you see Biden jumping out of the political hole he’s in, please tell me how.Gail: Just being sane, not under multitudinous indictments or facing a stupendous financial collapse is … going to help. This is not going to be one of those sunny remember-when election victories like Barack Obama’s or I guess for Republicans, Ronald Reagan’s. But given the Donald’s multiple upcoming trials, I think it’ll be a wow-what-a-crazy-year episode that ends with the majority rationally rejecting the worst possible option.Bret: If a second Trump administration is the national nightmare you and I think it will be, then Democrats need a better political strategy than getting angry at third-party candidates while hoping that Trump goes to jail before he returns to the White House. The passing of California’s Dianne Feinstein is a sad event, and there’s a lot to celebrate in her long and distinguished career, but it was hubris on her part to run for re-election in 2018, just like it was hubris for Ruth Bader Ginsburg not to step down while Obama was still president. Although, in Feinstein’s defense, at least she could be reasonably sure that a Democratic governor would choose her successor.Gail: Yeah, when you’ve got a great job in the spotlight, it’s hard to just let it go.Bret: Which maybe explains the guy in the White House. Sorry, go on.Gail: I thought Feinstein should have resigned when she became incapacitated. And Ginsburg diminished a great legacy by hanging onto her job when she was sick and close to death, thereby paving the way for Trump to complete his takeover of the Supreme Court.We have to celebrate the people who surrender the spotlight voluntarily, like Nancy Pelosi, who is still serving the country as a member of Congress, but gave up her party’s House leadership to let the next generation be in the center of attention.Hey — a positive thought! Any good news you want to share?Bret: I don’t know if this is good news per se, but I was delighted to hear Mark Milley, the retiring chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, dismiss Trump as a “wannabe dictator” after his former boss suggested the general’s actions with regard to China would have once been punishable by death. Milley emphasized the military’s fidelity to the Constitution, which is yet another reminder that Democrats should put aside their 50 years of misgivings about the Defense Department and embrace its vital role in defending democracy at home and abroad.Hoping for agreement …Gail: Total agreement about the Defense Department having a vital role. Not so much about the Defense Department having an efficient operation. Way too much waste, which mostly comes from members of Congress lobbying to keep job-creating military facilities in their districts, and pressure to pick up wasteful contracts because they’re supported by, um, members of Congress.Bret: I’ll make a modest bet that, in another few years, Democrats will be the strong-on-defense party, just as they were in the days of Jack Kennedy. It’s part of the great ideological switcheroo taking place right now between the parties: Republicans sound a lot like Democrats of yesteryear — working-class values, quasi-isolationist in their foreign policy, indifferent to the moral character of their leaders — while Democrats have become the party of college-educated managerial types who want to stand up to Russia and uphold moral integrity in political leadership.Gail: Well, we’ll see. At least we’re ending on a consensus of sorts: that Trump is going to be doing something awful soon. Granted, that’s not the toughest prediction to make. So before we go, give me one of your great quotes to celebrate the arrival of October.Bret: Not really a celebration, but a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem I love:Márgarét, áre you gríevingOver Goldengrove unleaving?Leáves like the things of man, youWith your fresh thoughts care for, can you?Ah! ás the heart grows olderIt will come to such sights colderBy and by, nor spare a sighThough worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;And yet you wíll weep and know why.Now no matter, child, the name:Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressedWhat heart heard of, ghost guessed:It ís the blight man was born for,It is Margaret you mourn for.I memorized it many years ago, thanks to my teacher and friend, Dr. Peter Bach. He, better than anyone, knows its meaning.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Robert Kennedy Jr. Hints Strongly at Third-Party Presidential Bid

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      The political scion, whose long-shot Democratic primary challenge has faltered, released a video teasing a third-party candidacy that would put Democrats on high alert.Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hinted strongly on Friday that he would run for president on a third-party ticket instead of continuing his long-shot Democratic primary challenge to President Biden, a move that would set off alarms among Democrats worried about its potential to cause chaos in November 2024.Mr. Kennedy, in a video released by his campaign, teased a “major announcement” in Philadelphia on Oct. 9, promising to speak about “a sea change in American politics” and dropping clues that he would be continuing his presidential campaign outside the Democratic Party.“How are we going to win against the established Washington interests?” Mr. Kennedy says in the video. “It’s not through playing the game by the corrupt rules that the corrupt powers and the vested interests have rigged to keep us all in their thrall. Instead, we’re going to have to rewrite the assumptions and change the habits of American politics.”“What I’ve come to understand after six months of campaigning: There is a path to victory,” he declares at another point, saying that the more he sees the inherent goodness of the American people, “the more the path to victory becomes visible.”Mr. Kennedy’s top aides declined to elaborate about his intentions. But his supporters have expressed frustration with the Democratic National Committee’s primary process, which has been geared toward backing Mr. Biden’s re-election bid.“It’s kind of obvious,” said Lincoln Chafee, the former Rhode Island governor and senator, who is backing Mr. Kennedy. “The primaries are so rigged, there’s no debates.”Mr. Kennedy, he added, “has to look at his options.”Democrats have watched Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy nervously since it began in April. They fear that any third-party candidacy could siphon off crucial votes from Mr. Biden, ultimately helping former President Donald J. Trump, the current favorite to be the Republican nominee.Mr. Kennedy, 69, an environmental lawyer and prominent purveyor of conspiracy theories whose family has symbolized Democratic politics for decades, has built a following among Silicon Valley tech executives, disaffected voters in both parties and skeptics of the medical and scientific establishments.After some polls in the late spring showed him with up to 20 percent of Democratic support, Mr. Kennedy’s fortunes fell as more attention was paid to his panoply of views on the coronavirus pandemic, immigration and vaccines that are well outside the party’s mainstream.By late summer, surveys showed Mr. Kennedy polling in the low single digits. With his campaign roiled by news coverage of recordings of bigoted remarks he made at a New York dinner, he no longer appeared to be a threat to Mr. Biden.In recent months, Mr. Kennedy has dropped hints about continuing his campaign as a third-party candidate. He met in July with the Libertarian Party chairwoman and suggested on a podcast that he could leave the Democratic Party.As the reality set in for Mr. Kennedy that Mr. Biden would not debate him, he began using his platform to become more critical of the party and its presidential election process.This month, he published an open letter to Jaime Harrison, the D.N.C. chairman, and party members pleading for accommodations.“The D.N.C. is not supposed to favor one candidate over another,” Mr. Kennedy wrote.The Biden campaign and its allies at the D.N.C. have summarily dismissed Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy. .The fact that some Republicans believe it would be advantageous to Mr. Trump if Mr. Kennedy embarks on a third-party run has raised questions about whether anyone in the former president’s world has encouraged it.But Mr. Kennedy has in recent months become far more popular with Republicans than he is with Democrats. His campaign in the Democratic primary has been supported by Republicans: David Sacks, a donor for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, hosted a fund-raiser for him in June.While Democrats are nervous that any third-party options would hurt Mr. Biden, it’s not clear from whom Mr. Kennedy would draw more votes if he qualified for the ballot in key battleground states.Over the years, third-party candidacies have been a focus of Roger J. Stone Jr., Mr. Trump’s longest-serving political adviser.“I predict #RFK abandons the rigged Democrat nominating process and runs as an Independent,” Mr. Stone wrote on Sept. 24 on X, the website formerly known as Twitter.In a brief interview on Friday, Mr. Stone said he had no involvement in Mr. Kennedy’s effort. “I’m supporting Donald Trump,” he said.Corey Lewandowski, an ally of Mr. Trump who served as his campaign manager during the 2016 election, wrote on X in response to an article about Mr. Kennedy’s possible move, “If true the race is over for @JoeBiden⁩!”Despite Mr. Kennedy’s earlier flirtation with the Libertarian Party, Brian McWilliams, a spokesman for the party, said there had been no recent conversations between Mr. Kennedy and its leadership.Placing himself on the ballot as a candidate of a newly established third party would be an onerous and expensive proposition for Mr. Kennedy, who would have to navigate ballot access laws in enough states to be a serious presidential candidate.Maggie Haberman More

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      Discontent With Party Politics Reaches New Heights

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      Americans tend to agree on what is wrong with the political system, and majorities of voters from both parties are unhappy with the quality of the candidates. But there also seems to be little appetite for third-party candidates.Close to one year away from the 2024 presidential election, most Americans say they are discontent with their candidate choices, and 28 percent of Americans say they do not like either political party, quadruple the share that said the same thing 30 years ago.But the question remains whether voters will hold their noses and vote for a candidate they dislike or sit out this election.Americans are less satisfied than they were even five years ago with the quality of candidates running for office, according to a new study by Pew Research Center that attempts to understand the breadth and depth of political dissatisfaction in the country. Just 26 percent of Americans said candidates for office had been good in the last several years, with no split between Republicans and Democrats. That’s down from 47 percent in 2018 and 34 percent in 2021, when voters who aligned with the party in power were more likely to be satisfied.When it comes to the quality of candidates running for the presidency, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they are not satisfied, but majorities of voters from both parties are unhappy.“The two-party system just doesn’t work — there aren’t only two types of people,” said Madison Lane, a mother of two and political independent from Jacksonville, Fla. “I believe in global warming, gay rights and trans rights. I can’t really vote Republican and believe in those things. But at the same time, Democrats are just fueled by big corporations and money. So I feel like I’m left with no good candidates to choose from.”As more ideologically extreme voters decide primary elections, parties are also pushed to the extremes, which leaves a vast majority of the people in the middle feeling alienated, said Professor Ian Shapiro, a political science professor at Yale University and author of “Responsible Parties: Saving Democracy From Itself.”“I expect this number who feel alienated by the parties to continue to grow,” he said.Across the partisan spectrum, Americans tend to agree on what is wrong with the political system, citing political fighting, polarization, money in politics and lobbying influence. And when asked specifically to list any strengths of the political system, more than half of Americans either skipped the question entirely or said the system had no strengths. Respondents who did not list a strength tended to be younger and less educated.In an era where many delight in hate watching television shows, engagement in politics may be a part of the problem. Highly politically engaged Americans are more likely than those who are more tuned out to say they always or often feel exhausted and angry when they think about politics.Discontent with political options is not new, and nearly every presidential election features a quest to float a moderate, if often quixotic, alternative to the major parties. According to the Pew study, sizable shares of Americans say they wish there were more political parties from which to choose, and this sentiment is stronger among Democrats than Republicans.But only about a quarter of Americans actually think having more political parties would solve the nation’s problems. And most Republicans and Democrats think their own party governs in an honest and ethical way and is respectful and tolerant of different types of people.“Politicians are not focusing on the priorities of the public,” Morris Fiorina, a political scientist at Stanford, said. “They’re primarily focused on niche issues.” Even so, he said, “most Americans will hold their nose and pick from the available two parties.”Despite the rhetoric from many Republican elected officials focused on questioning the integrity of elections and vote counting, Americans — including sizable shares of Republicans — still see voting as the single best way to change the country for the better.Even so, only a quarter of Americans think who the president is makes a big difference in their lives. More

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      He Was a Hillary Clinton Cheerleader. Now He Calls Democrats a Threat.

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      Peter Daou, a former Democratic activist, is running Cornel West’s third-party campaign. He talked to The New York Times about how he came to view the two-party system as a bigger problem than Donald J. Trump.On Monday, Cornel West, a left-wing scholar and third-party presidential candidate, announced that he had hired Peter Daou as his campaign manager. The choice adds a new twist to one of the most unusual career trajectories in political consulting.A Lebanese American jazz keyboardist and dance music producer — one of his early club remixes was declared “smokin’” by Billboard in 1991 — Mr. Daou, 58, found his way into politics in the mid-2000s. He started as a liberal blogger and then became a digital adviser for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign and Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign.In 2016, he achieved prominence as the chief executive of Shareblue, a pro-Clinton megaphone that cultivated online outrage against Donald J. Trump, the political media and Bernie Sanders, Mrs. Clinton’s primary rival. (Mr. Daou was not affiliated with the 2016 Clinton campaign, but he did get a shout out in Mrs. Clinton’s subsequent book, “What Happened.”) At the time, a Sanders strategist called Mr. Daou the “pond scum of American politics” — so it was a surprise when, four years later, Mr. Daou transformed from Clinton superfan to an equally loud supporter of Mr. Sanders, the Vermont socialist.It was the first of a series of record-scratch shifts in Mr. Daou’s politics. He has since quit the Democratic Party, called on President Biden to resign over campaign-trail allegations of groping, and worked briefly for Marianne Williamson’s campaign before signing onto Dr. West’s Green Party candidacy.In 2017, Mr. Daou started a short-lived online platform, endorsed by Mrs. Clinton, that aimed to fight “a proliferation of confusing, chaotic misinformation” with verified, Clinton-affirming facts. He denounced “Russia’s successful hacking of our election using cyberespionage, online intimidation, and disinformation.” He now mocks the “liberal speak” of Democrats: “January 6, January 6, January 6, January 6, January 6, January 6, January 6, January 6, Orange man bad, Orange man bad, Orange man bad, Orange man bad, Putin, Putin, Putin, Putin, Putin, Putin,” he posted this month on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.“My evolution, philosophically and politically, I’ve been exceptionally transparent about it,” Mr. Daou said in a phone conversation with The New York Times, shortly after the West campaign’s announcement. The interview has been edited and condensed.How would you define success for the Cornel West campaign? What are you trying to do here?The first definition of success, to me, is a President Cornel West. But there are many, many ways of thinking about what this campaign can achieve. One would be to finally break the grip of the duopoly, you know, the monopoly of the two parties where you really just get two choices.You’ll hear Democrats saying, “We’re saving democracy, we’re protecting democracy.” Well, you don’t protect democracy by trying to kick Greens off the ballot, and you don’t protect democracy by telling people, “You’re a spoiler.” You can’t kill democracy to save it.Cornel West is running for president as a third-party candidate.Damian Dovarganes/Associated PressDuring the 2020 primary, you wrote an essay in The Nation warning that fighting among the various factions of the American left, “at a time when they need to marshal every asset to defeat Trump and his G.O.P. cronies,” would be “an epic act of self-destruction.” Jaime Harrison, the Democratic National Committee chairman, has made more or less the same argument about Dr. West’s candidacy, saying, “This is not the time to play around on the margins.”Somebody quoted William Blake, in “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” on Twitter: “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.” Yes, in 2020, I was buying into these spoiler arguments. I was going after the progressives and the leftists and the Green Party members who I have now come to see as my family. And it was a mistake. I was wrong. You know, it’s OK to be wrong.In 2016, you worked for Shareblue, which a lot of people would credit with stoking the my-party-right-or-wrong strain of Democratic social media posting that you now decry. Do you feel like you had a hand in creating this thing that you’re fighting?I think I played a part, yes. Because look, when you’re in that partisan war, you’re in the trenches and you’re fighting and you’re throwing punches. You get caught up in the moment, you believe your side is right, and you fight. I’m one human being, but I take responsibility for that. I apologize for that. The way I see it, what I can do right now, especially with Dr. West, is break out of it.You’ve recently made fun of what you call the “orange man bad” school of liberal discourse.My former liberal Democratic political friends say, “Oh, you just love Trump, you’re a Trump supporter.” No, I oppose Trump more than you do. The problem is painting Donald Trump as some singularly dangerous figure, because it takes attention away from all the other problems. That’s propaganda. That’s intentional. And it also raises a lot of money for the Democratic Party.You wrote a book in 2019 arguing that “nothing in American life is more of a threat to our democracy than the Republican Party’s lurch to the far right.” You’re now arguing that the Democratic Party “is itself a threat to democracy.” Are these threats comparable, to your mind?I consider myself an independent leftist. I haven’t always been in that place. For a long time, I worked within the Democratic Party, and slowly moved toward the left, to the point where I quit the party in 2020. And, having done that, I look much more objectively at these arguments that Republicans are far, far worse and far, far more dangerous than Democrats, and if Trump gets elected again, it’s the end of the world, it’s the end of the country.When we say we’re protecting democracy, there’s an assumption there that there is a democracy. You only are given two choices. And both parties are responsible for that. It’s certainly a threat to democracy to take Joe Biden, who 67 percent of Democratic voters in a recent CNN poll do not want to be the Democratic nominee.If that’s the case, why not challenge him in the primary? Why run as a third-party challenger?I think what we’ve seen this cycle, and the last couple of cycles with Bernie Sanders, is the Democratic Party will not give the opportunity for somebody like Dr. West to actually engage in a fair primary process. So I think this is the right way to go. The Green Party will get on the ballot, or we’re working to get on it, in all 50 states. We are going to make sure this is a fair process because it’s not going to be a fair process within the Democratic Party.Ron Klain, who until recently was Mr. Biden’s chief of staff, wrote a blurb for your 2019 book. When was the last time you talked to anybody in Bidenworld?I have not been in contact with any of my establishment colleagues for many years. I’m sure they don’t have very high opinions of me. But it really doesn’t matter to me, because this is not about my personal connections.You recently addressed the young Biden-supporting TikTok influencer Harry Sisson, comparing his enthusiasm for Mr. Biden to yours for Mrs. Clinton in 2016, and warning him: “Trust me, you’ll regret it later.” For a long time, even after you embraced Bernie Sanders, you seemed to stand by your years as a Clinton die-hard. Are looking back differently at that now?I thought I was doing the right thing at the time. Looking back now, I was just enabling and supporting a system that is oppressing people. So for a younger person getting involved, I say, look at the system itself. Look at the suffering created by the system and fight the system. Don’t get attached to one politician or one party. I find the idea of anarchist philosophy, along the lines of David Graeber, quite intriguing: You know, no power dynamics, no coercion, a structure in which in which we all cooperate, and there’s true equality, right?In the end, what Dr. West is doing, this is the way you do it: You go at the system directly. And that’s what we’re going to be doing to the very last day. He will be on the ballot. And this is not going to be some sort of process in which, you know, “Down the line, well, maybe not, if this is going to bring on a Republican.”We are working to get on the ballot. In the general election, there are going to be at least three choices, and he will be one of them. More

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      Manchin Mulls His Political Future, Keeping Washington Guessing

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      The West Virginia Democrat could run for re-election to the Senate, make a third-party presidential bid or simply retire from politics. To his party’s consternation, he’s not ready to say which.Senator Joe Manchin III, the conservative West Virginia Democrat, was attending an event in his home state last month when he made a joke that quickly touched off the latest round of feverish speculation about his political future.“I will also endorse Jim for basketball coach,” Mr. Manchin said, suggesting that the popular Republican governor, Jim Justice, who has announced he will seek Mr. Manchin’s Senate seat next year, should instead be hired by West Virginia University to pursue his lifelong passion on the court.The comment seemed to suggest that Mr. Manchin, who has flirted with bolting his party and running for president as an independent, had not given up on defending his Senate seat.But as the last pivotal Democratic senator who has not yet said whether he will seek re-election, Mr. Manchin still has Washington and his party guessing about his plans.Behind closed doors, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, has been relentlessly encouraging him to run, regarding Mr. Manchin — perhaps the only Democrat with a chance to win a statewide contest in deeply conservative West Virginia — as key to preserving his party’s tenuous control of the Senate. Democrats across the country have been praying that he will seek re-election rather than pursuing a presidential bid through the centrist political group No Labels, which could draw votes from President Biden and help elect a Republican.For a man who routinely seeks the spotlight when faced with politically consequential decisions, this is among the most closely watched dilemmas Mr. Manchin has confronted.“I don’t have a clue what he’s going to do, and I don’t think he knows what he’s going to do,” said Phil Smith, the longtime chief lobbyist for the United Mine Workers of America and a close ally of Mr. Manchin’s.In a brief interview in the basement of the Senate this week, Mr. Manchin said he would make a decision about his future by the end of the year. If he intends to run for re-election, he must inform the state by January.“The bottom line is, I’ve been in West Virginia for a long time and moving in the right direction,” he said. “Our approval rating’s up quite substantially in a very, very, very red state. So I feel very good about all those things.”He added, “We’ve got plenty of time.”Still, decisions will have to be made before the political terrain becomes completely clear. The most important of his considerations is which Republican he would face. To win the nomination, Mr. Justice, a wealthy Democrat turned Republican, would have to defeat Representative Alex X. Mooney, a more reliable ally of former President Donald J. Trump’s.A poll last week for the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce encapsulated Mr. Manchin’s conundrum. The senator and the governor are both popular in the state, with 56 percent of voters approving of the job Mr. Justice has done and 51 percent approving of Mr. Manchin’s performance, numbers above even Mr. Trump’s 49 percent approval rating.Gov. Jim Justice of West Virginia, a wealthy Democrat turned Republican, is very popular in the state.Shuran Huang for The New York TimesWhile the poll showed Mr. Justice beating Mr. Manchin handily in a hypothetical Senate contest, 51 percent to 38 percent, the poll also found that Mr. Manchin would narrowly lead Mr. Mooney, 45 percent to 41 percent.(Mr. Manchin’s allies point out that his approval rating increased by 9 percentage points since 2021 in the poll, while Mr. Justice declined by 5 points.)The conservative political action committee Club for Growth has said it will back Mr. Mooney in the primary. Joe Kildea, a spokesman for the group, said its political arm had raised about $14 million and would spend “whatever it takes.” That could bloody Mr. Justice, but money alone may not be enough for Mr. Mooney, who trails the governor among West Virginia Republican voters, 58 percent to 26 percent.“We beat big-government, establishment RINOs all the time,” said David McIntosh, the president of Club for Growth, referring to the conservative slur “Republicans in name only.”It is also unclear whether Mr. Trump will seek to get involved in the primary, set for May 14. In 2022, he endorsed Mr. Mooney in a House Republican primary against Representative David B. McKinley, and Mr. Mooney won easily. This time around, Mr. Trump is extremely unhappy with Club for Growth, which has funded an advertising campaign in Iowa imploring Republicans to back a different presidential candidate. Then again, he also likes to counter Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, who backs Mr. Justice.Mr. Manchin’s allies claim that none of that is weighing particularly heavily on the senator these days.“I know it’s shocking in D.C., but Joe Manchin isn’t focused on partisan politics this year,” said Jonathan Kott, his former senior adviser in the Senate. “He will sit down with his family at the end of the year and figure out how he can best serve the people of West Virginia and the country.”Yet the timeline set by No Labels for a possible independent presidential run has complicated Mr. Manchin’s calculations. So far, the group has qualified for a spot on the presidential ballot in only 11 states and is hustling to make the ballot in many more. And though No Labels leaders still insist they will only start a “unity” ticket for the White House if the major party nominees do not move to the political center, the group has set a date in April for a convention in Dallas to choose its candidates.That means Mr. Manchin would be choosing between the Senate run and a White House bid before he knew whether No Labels would select him.His third option might be simply to retire at 76. His alma mater, West Virginia University, is in deep trouble, slashing its budget, laying off faculty and even eliminating its foreign language program. Its president, E. Gordon Gee, turns 80 in February, and a chance to lead the university out of crisis would be tempting for the senator, Mr. Manchin’s allies said.Students protesting the budget cuts that led to the elimination of foreign language programs at West Virginia University in Morgantown, W.Va., last month.Leah Willingham/Associated PressOne official with close ties to the senator pointed to the decision of one of his former chiefs of staff, Larry Puccio, to sign on with Mr. Justice as an indication that Mr. Manchin will retire.Adding to the intrigue, the senator’s daughter Heather Manchin has started a nonprofit organization, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, that is trying to raise more than $100 million to promote centrist policies. Those familiar with the organization, which is currently independent from Mr. Manchin, said it could serve as a landing pad for the senator if he retires from politics. The group could also conduct market research on policies and messaging that would prove useful to his presidential aspirations should he run, though Ms. Manchin denied that had anything to do with it.“This movement is not about starting a third party or rallying behind any one individual,” she said. The No Labels flirtation has perplexed some of Mr. Manchin’s allies and some political observers. Senate aides say Mr. Manchin is seriously considering it, but others suggest that he is simply using the prospect of a third-party presidential run to keep his name in the news, pressure Mr. Biden to address his policy priorities as he carries out the Inflation Reduction Act and raise money for whatever he decides to do next.A possible rival for the No Labels ticket has already emerged in Larry Hogan, a moderate Republican and the former governor of Maryland.Mr. Hogan, appearing on CBS’s “Face The Nation” on Sunday, implied that the name at the top of the No Labels ticket would have to be a Republican to ensure that the independent campaign would take at least as many votes from the current Republican front-runner, Mr. Trump, as from Mr. Biden. Democrats, he said, should relax.Mr. Manchin’s possible candidacy “is really what set them off in a panic,” Mr. Hogan said.It was at an event in Beckley, W.Va., for former Representative Nick Rahall, one of the last Democrats to represent the state in Congress, that Mr. Manchin made the quip about West Virginia University hiring Mr. Justice to coach basketball, after Mr. Gee had suggested it.The event was a dedication of Mr. Rahall’s archives, and the crowd was full of former Democrats, including Mr. Justice. Mr. Manchin was the last of his kind.Still, Mr. Rahall left confident in the senator’s survival.“Joe Manchin has said if he enters the race, he will win, and I believe him when he says that,” Mr. Rahall said. “Now, he hasn’t said which race he’ll enter.” More

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      Joe Manchin Says He’s Thinking ‘Seriously’ About Leaving the Democratic Party

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      Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, told a local news station on Thursday that he “would think very seriously” about leaving the Democratic Party and becoming an independent.“I’ve been thinking about that for quite some time,” Mr. Manchin said in an interview on MetroNews’s “Talkline” show, adding: “The brand has become so bad, the D brand and R brand. In West Virginia, the D brand because it’s nationally bad. It’s not the Democrats in West Virginia. It’s the Democrats in Washington, or the Washington policies of the Democrats. You’ve heard me say a million times that I’m not a Washington Democrat.”He said he had not made a decision yet — either about his party affiliation or about his electoral plans. He is up for re-election to the Senate next year in what, if he runs, promises to be a very difficult race, and he has flirted with running a third-party campaign for president.Last month, he appeared at an event for the bipartisan group No Labels, which is considering fielding a third-party ticket in 2024 to the alarm of Democrats, who fear it would draw enough voters away from President Biden to ensure a Republican victory.No third-party candidate has come close to being elected in modern times, and it was not clear in the MetroNews interview that Mr. Manchin himself thought such a candidacy was viable. He framed it instead as a way to “make a big, big splash and maybe bring the traditional parties, the Democratic and Republican Party, back to what they should be” — which, in his view, is “the middle.”If Mr. Manchin did leave the Democratic Party, he would be the second senator to do so in a short span of time. Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who was elected as a Democrat in 2018, became an independent at the end of last year. Like Mr. Manchin, she faces a difficult re-election campaign next year if she chooses to run in a three-way race against a Democrat and a Republican. More

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      The Conditions Are Ripe for a Third Party in 2024. Is No Labels It?

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      A majority of Americans don’t want to see President Biden and former President Trump compete for the White House again in 2024. No Labels, a nonpartisan political group, is talking about running a third-party unity ticket next year if Joe Biden and Donald Trump are the nominees. The Opinion writer and editor Katherine Miller has been reporting on a potential third option, and attended the first No Labels town hall in New Hampshire. In this audio short, Miller argues the group has failed to make the case that it holds a viable solution to voter unease.The political organization No Labels was created to support centrism and bipartisanship in American politics.Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call, via Associated PressThe Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.This Times Opinion piece was produced by Jillian Weinberger. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin and Annie-Rose Strasser. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Special thanks to Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. More