A former senior adviser to former President Barack Obama is warning Democrats about a potential threat to President Biden’s re-election campaign from third-party candidates like 2024 Green Party presidential nominee Cornel West.
David Axelrod, who served as Obama’s top adviser for two years in the White House before becoming the chief strategist for Obama’s successful 2012 re-election campaign, questions “why the alarm bells aren’t ringing” for Democrats amid growing concern about West’s candidacy in the race.
Since announcing last month that he would run for the White House as a third-party candidate, West, a progressive activist and philosopher, has been largely dismissed by Democrats as a serious contender as they work to shore up support for Biden ahead of the 2024 election.
Axelrod, however, insists that Democrats should take challenges like West’s to the sitting president seriously.
PROGRESSIVE ACTIVIST CORNEL WEST ANNOUNCES THIRD-PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
Left to right: 2024 Green Party presidential candidate Cornel West, former senior Obama adviser David Axelrod and President Biden. (Joshua Lott/AFP; Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency; Anna Moneymaker via Getty Images)
“This is going to resonate with people,” Axelrod, a CNN political commentator, said this week. “I don’t know why the alarm bells aren’t going off now, and they should be constant from now until the election.”
Like Axelrod, Pennsylvania Democratic Lt. Gov. Austin Davis said his party “should be concerned” about the implications of West’s candidacy.
“We should be concerned. I don’t think time is necessarily on our side. The longer these things go on, the worse they tend to get,” Davis said, according to CNN. “We have to try to deal with it pretty quickly if we can.”
CORNEL WEST CALLS BIDEN’S PAST ‘CONNECTIONS’ WITH SEGREGATIONISTS, SAYS TRUMP ALSO FAILS ON RACIAL ISSUES
Davis also noted that the conversations about West, so far, have been between insiders and not voters, the outlet reported.
The party’s growing concerns come amid West’s targeting of Biden on numerous issues in recent weeks.
Earlier this month, West told Fox News that his third-party bid is “as serious as a heart attack” and doubled down on comments he made questioning Biden’s compassion for the black community.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and political activist Cornel West take the stage together during a campaign event at the Whittemore Center Arena on February 10, 2020 in Durham, NH (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Criticizing Biden’s past dealings with segregationist Democratic senators, West mentioned Biden’s praise of former Mississippi Sen. John Stennis, namesake of the NASA Space Center near Kiln, Mississippi. In 2008, Biden called his fellow Democrat “hell.”
Most recently, Biden regaled supporters at a 2019 fundraiser with his time working with Stennis’ Mississippi running mate James Eastland and then-Sen. Herman Talmadge, D-Ga., who supported segregation.
“I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland. He never called me ‘boy.’ He always called me ‘son,'” Biden said of the senator who once warned against “miscegenation.”
Biden was reprimanded at the time by Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, who said in a statement obtained by the Daily Mail: “Don’t joke about calling black men ‘boys.’
On “Hannity,” West confirmed that he is accusing Biden of “crimes against humanity” against African Americans, the New York Post reports.
When Hannity asked West about minority voters who continue to largely support the Democratic Party, which West said is as broken as the GOP, the professor responded that both former President Donald Trump and Biden are flawed on racial issues and both parties are tied to “big money” and corruption.
President Biden speaks at the Philadelphia Shipyard on July 20, 2023 in Philadelphia. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
“That’s true for Republicans, that’s true for Democrats. [I’m] speaking of brother Trump himself. And the Biden connection to Stennis. Biden’s connection to [ex-South Carolina Democrat-turned-Republican Sen.] Strom Thurmond. We know brother Trump’s own father has been linked to the Klan and Trump’s language about black people,” West said.
During the same interview, West criticized the White House’s handling of the cocaine incident, which Hannity noted was quickly shut down. West agreed that a Western administration would not see the same alleged deferential treatment in the form of such a hasty conclusion if drugs were found.
“For my White House, and I’ve told my people, I’m not even going to the White House until every American citizen has a home, I want to abolish poverty, abolish homelessness. I want living-wage jobs,” he said at the time.
Fox News’ Charles Creitz contributed to this report.
