Cornel West Has Been Called Far Worse Than A Spoiler The D.C. Brief will be back next week. In the meantime, here's a look at some of the latest reporting from TIME's Washington Bureau, including Mini Racker's profile of Cornel West, the colorful academic who is making a long-shot bid for the White House as an independent. Cornel West knows what most Democrats think of him. Since he launched his presidential bid four months ago, the progressive, media-savvy academic has heard the accusations that he’ll prove a spoiler and hand the 2024 election to Donald Trump. He doesn’t think that will be the case. But he also can’t imagine four more years of Joe Biden as President would be much better. “I mean, it's a good question,” West says. “Is World War III better than Civil War II?” West and I first spoke the day before Hamas launched a stunning attack on Israel that killed more than 1,200 people. In the days since, he has pushed for restraint, and urged Biden and other leaders to avoid retaliatory rhetoric. For West, a charged moment like this is why he's running for president. “It just reveals the moral bankruptcy of both parties when it comes to foreign policy,” he tells me. “We see that so clearly now.” West has long been known as one of the country’s most prominent Black scholars and activists, “the architect of a post-civil rights philosophy of black liberation,” as TIME put it in a 1993 profile. Now, as Biden struggles to inspire the left, Democrats are getting nervous that West could peel off just enough votes to matter in a close election. Lost in much of that discussion is how much West is making foreign policy a centerpiece of his longshot bid. To be sure, West’s campaign remains a shoestring operation that may never get off the ground. He lacks the movement infrastructure and specific policy platforms that helped past left-wing presidential candidates like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, or Bernie Sanders, outperform expectations. Given West’s recent decision to run as an independent, even getting on the ballot in every state will be challenging. But there’s a reason that West has managed to stay in the public eye for more than three decades. His keen intellect and eloquence mean he stands to draw interest, particularly from voters on the left who remain unexcited about the idea of another Biden term. And as the economic fallout of the pandemic drags on and wars abroad pick up, a distinguished thinker calling for radical change has an opening—if not to win, at least to alter the course of the 2024 race. | 
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