Biden challenger West confident president ‘running out of gas’ and won’t be Democrats’ nominee

Independent presidential candidate Cornel West said he doesn’t think he will be competing against President Joe Biden in the 2024 general election, adding he believes the president may drop his bid for a second term.

West, who left the Green Party to launch an independent run in October, said Biden might take the same path former President Lyndon B. Johnson did in 1968 when he opted not to run for reelection after holding the front-runner spot for the Democratic nomination early in the election season.

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“I’m not even sure whether I’ll be running against Biden,” West said in an interview with Politico. “Biden — I think he’s going to have an LBJ moment [and] pull back.”

West said he could be running against two prominent blue-state governors who have been floated as Biden’s backups but refused to launch a bid: Govs. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI).

Newsom has repeatedly denied rumors he will jump into the race for president in 2024, supporting Biden’s reelection amid allegations that the California governor is running a shadow presidential campaign.

Appearing on Late Night with Seth Meyers on Wednesday, Newsom again confirmed, “I’m not running for president,” before taking a shot at Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), whom he recently debated on Fox News, adding, “Ron DeSantis, apparently, still is.”

Whitmer has also rejected calls to run for president in 2024, taking her refusal a step further in an interview last month with the Detroit Free Press, saying she doesn’t “foresee” ever running for the highest office.

West offered sharp criticism of the two front-runners. West said Biden is a “milquetoast neoliberal with military adventurism, possibly leading the world toward World War III” and characterized former President Donald Trump as a “bona fide gangsta, neo-fascist, Pied Piper leading the country for the second civil war.”

While some Democrats have warned his third-party bid will take votes away from Biden in the 2024 race, therefore handing the election to Trump, West isn’t worried about being called a spoiler.

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“I don’t accept the spoiler category,” West said. “A vote for Biden, a vote for Trump is a vote for Biden and a vote for Trump.”

“There might be slices of people ‘if I didn’t vote for West, I would have voted for Biden,’” he added. “But that’s not, to me, a spoiler. If you’re in a race, and you make a case, and they vote for you, how do you become the spoiler?”