Candidate Cornel West Tells Biden: ‘Get off the Crack Pipe’

In his first post-announcement appearance, on KBLA’s Tavis Smiley’s podcast, third party presidential candidate Cornel West told President Biden to “get off the crack pipe.”

The 70-year-old announced his bid for Biden’s job on Twitter on Monday as a member of the People’s Party. He is a former professor at Harvard and Princeton and currently the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary. In his campaign platform he calls for Medicare for all, protection of abortion access, and student debt forgiveness.

“I am running for truth and justice and as a candidate for president of the United States in the People’s Party,” West says on his campaign site. “I want to reintroduce America to the best of itself – the dignity, courage, and creativity of precious everyday people. Join our movement for priceless poor and working people of all colors here and abroad.”

West continued, “If the Democrats are putting out mediocre, milquetoast, neoliberal politicians who can’t say a mumbling word about militarism, can’t say a mumbling word about a serious response to poverty, can’t say a mumbling word about serious white supremacist practices — I mean, Biden himself said America is not a racist society. I said, ‘Get off the crack pipe,’” West said.

Get off the crack pipe. That’s not going to endear him to the Democrat Party, but it just might attract enough Independents to make West a spoiler candidate.