Cornel West Announces VP Pick: Far-Left BLM Activist Melina Abdullah

Third-party candidacies have never fared well in American presidential elections. The last third-party candidate to win even one Electoral College vote was in 1968 when American Independent Party candidate George Wallace gleaned 46 electoral votes, all in states of the former Confederacy, in an election that saw Richard Nixon into the White House.

So these candidacies have been, as much as anything else, protest candidacies. That's fine; the world has no shortage of windmills to tilt at. A great example of this kind of protest candidacy is that of Cornel West, who has about as much chance of being elected president as he does of being spontaneously transported to Tau Ceti by a random quantum tunnel.

However, like that sudden quantum tunnel, the chance of West being elected president isn't zero, and if he does attain the title of Leader of the Free World, he has announced that his vice president will be an academic of sorts, Melina Abdullah, a professor of Pan-African studies.

Long-shot presidential candidate Cornel West tapped Melina Abdullah, a professor and one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter, as his running mate for his independent presidential bid.
West announced his pick on Wednesday’s episode of "The Tavis Smiley Radio Show" on KBLA radio.
"I wanted somebody whose heart, mind, and soul is committed to the empowerment of poor and working peoples of all colors," West said. "Melina has a history of longevity of putting her heart, mind and soul in the struggle."

While the Biden campaign has to be concerned that this candidacy will siphon off votes from the incumbent on the left, even as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. takes some votes from moderates, the Trump people are probably pleased as punch to have West and Abdullah on as many ballots as possible. That's the primary role third-party presidential candidates have played in American elections. It's widely thought that independent candidate Ross Perot may have thrown the 1992 election to Bill Clinton, and even now, 24 years after the 2000 election, one would suspect Ralph Nader shows his face in Florida with great caution.

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Setting aside what one might think of their policy positions, Abdullah is, at least, a logical pick for West, as their views seem to align; both are far-left, socialist candidates. Ideological compatibility is important, after all, even in a daffy-left ticket like this.

Abdullah, a professor of Pan-African studies and formerly chaired the Department of Pan-African Studies at Cal State, said that her "heart just soared" when she was asked to be West's vice president.
"I regard [West], and many of us regard him as one of the most brilliant people to walk this earth, and so I’ve been following him and have been really enthusiastic about his candidacy," Abdullah said on Smiley’s show.
"He and his wife, Annahita, asked and immediately my heart just soared," she said. "I said ‘yes’ immediately. Like, shouted ‘yes.’"

Abdullah, a practicing Muslim, proclaims herself a supporter of Gaza and has compared the New York City police to the Ku Klux Klan.

"The KKK, the police, and government officials are one in the same," she wrote in a X post in Dec. 2023.
After the release of Beyoncé's latest album release last month, which features the singer holding an American flag, Abdullah wrote on X, "The #AmericanFlag symbolizes the genocide of Indigenous people, the theft of their land, the enslavement, dehumanization, and exploitation of Black people, and settler colonialism. Critique around @Beyonce’s artistic choice is important and healthy, not hate."

These are policy positions that are, to put it mildly, unlikely to gain much traction in a national election.

This is a logical pick for a candidate whose candidacy is, honestly, a sleeveless errand. But as Cornel West and Melina Abdullah will siphon at least some far-left votes away from Joe Biden, in so doing, he will have accomplished one thing many might think impossible: making Joe Biden and Kamala Harris look, by comparison, like moderates.

Third-party candidacies for president are almost always futile. This year will be no different. That's not necessarily true for state and local offices; here in Alaska, the Alaskan Independence Party even managed to get one of their own elected governor. But the Electoral College makes this extremely difficult at the presidential level, and it's safe to predict that neither Cornel West nor Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will attain even one Electoral College vote.

Then again, this has hardly been a normal election cycle so far.