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Cornel West Not On Board For Hillary Clinton Presidency

By Aric Mitchell
Published on: 04:03 PST, Jul 30, 2016

Cornel West appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher Friday night (July 29) to discuss the fallout from the Democratic National Convention and why he still refuses to get behind a Hillary Clinton Presidency.

It should be noted from the outset that West, an anti-Israel activist and far-left political supporter who has already endorsed Green Party candidate Jill Stein, has no desire to see a Donald Trump administration.

Nevertheless, he believes that the best way to fight against that is not to support Hillary Clinton in November, but to instead back a dark horse third-party candidate, who has already offered her nomination to the man who did end up supporting Clinton, Bernie Sanders.

Cornel West explained his position in greater detail to an incredulous Bill Maher, claiming that Clinton “has not done what people say in terms of being great champion for poor people. It’s a lie.”

When Maher pushed the issue by claiming there were “only two menu options,” Cornel didn’t back down, mentioning three candidates (including Jill Stein) before correcting that number to four (including Gary Johnson).

He continued.

“At the moment, it looks that way (only two candidates), but Bernie started with three percent, too. We shall see, but it’s going to be tough. It’s going to be tough. Part of it is this, brother. You got to draw a line in the sand. I draw a line in the sand. It’s not dumb at all. Under certain conditions, you wouldn’t make a choice between two people.”

To this, Maher acknowledged that there does come a time where you have to draw a line, but Cornel West needed to think about it as if he had two train choices to get to San Francisco. “One train is not going to San Francisco but it’ll get you closer; the other is going to Hell.”

This drew laughter from both West and the audience, but still, he wasn’t ready to settle for Clinton. “Let me answer the question because I love this analogy,” he began. “The Clinton Train — Wall Street, security, surveillance, militaristic — it’s not going in the direction I’m going. She’s a neoliberal … and I do believe neoliberalism is a disaster.”

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If Maher and his panel — listed in the tweet below — were hoping to sway Cornel West to their side, they would be disappointed.

Maher even tried to pull out the big guns and hint that Trump could cause a nuclear launch. He also lamented the fact that “nothing is working” against Trump. “He’s at best or at worst tied with Hillary even after their Conventions,” the comedian said.

That’s when Cornel West cut him off.

“It’s too easy to bash him,” West said. “He’s speaking to the pain of the white working class brothers, who have been overlooked by globalization, by these trade deals. You’ve got to speak to them to get them out from under him.”

Maher responded by saying that his guest was being nicer to Trump than he was to Hillary.

To that, Cornel corrected that he believed Trump to be a neofascist and a xenophobe, but when it came to Hillary Clinton, he felt that she may be “brilliant” and “smart,” but “she just doesn’t have a whole lot of integrity.”

Video to the exchange is available at this link.

But what do you think, readers? Did Cornel West hit the nail on the head about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and regardless, should he jump off the Green Party train and join Clinton to stop a Trump Presidency? Sound off in the comments section below.

[Image via James Stewart | Flickr Creative Commons | Resized and Cropped | CC BY-NC 2.0]

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