The Left Has No Good Choices for 2024 | Opinion

In 2016 and 2020, progressives who wanted an alternative to the Democratic establishment had a clear choice in the presidential primary: They could vote for democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, who ran insurgent campaigns that inspired huge numbers of young voters. Millennials tend to be progressive: critical of the American economic system, in favor of single-payer healthcare, supportive of radical action to deal with the threat of climate change, and desirous of high minimum wages.

But for the 2024 presidential election, those on the left don't have a major campaign to support, and the absence of anyone obvious to get behind threatens to demoralize and demobilize people. Despite the fact that voters indicate overwhelmingly that they don't want Joe Biden, it seems as if the Democratic Party is successfully making sure that no serious competitor to Biden emerges.

There are a few possible progressive options. Marianne Williamson is a staunch critic of neoliberalism and the existing leaders of the Democratic Party, and promises that as president she would "get about the work of trying to effectuate universal health care, free college and tech schools, the Family Leave Act, free childcare, and livable wages." Cornel West, the philosopher and activist, is a longtime democratic socialist who says that "neither political party wants to tell the truth about Wall Street, about Ukraine, about the Pentagon, about Big Tech."

But it's hard to see either of these candidates taking off. West, rather than following Sanders' path of trying to unseat the Democrats' presumptive nominee, has chosen to run with the controversial and marginal "People's Party," which has virtually no ballot access and has never come close to winning an election. West is beloved and admired by many leftists for his long history of activism, but his views can be idiosyncratic (he recently co-authored an Op-Ed defending some of Ron DeSantis' plans for education) and his predilection for lively rhetoric over clear substance makes him hard to envision as a potential chief executive.

Williamson should be taken more seriously than she usually is. She's got a serious progressive agenda and is a dynamite public speaker. Due to her background in self-help and spirituality, she's often mocked (including by Biden's own press secretary) as the "crystal lady," a charge that's unfair. But Williamson hasn't done her reputation any favors with her history of otherworldly New Age pronouncements, and she flopped completely in 2020. Her candidacy does not appear to be attracting much support, though she is developing an impressively large following among young people on TikTok.

Then there is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who appears to be running mostly on the strength of family name recognition. (I doubt most voters could cite a single fact about his life and work.) Kennedy is a crank known for spreading outright falsehoods about vaccines, and despite some attempts to paint himself as anti-establishment, it's unlikely that a chum of billionaire Elon Musk is going to get far with the ex-Sanders crowd.

The fact is that after Bernie's last campaign, the national progressive Left has found itself unmoored. The Bernie candidacy gave people a clear goal to work toward and something major to organize around. Now, with the "Squad" of dynamic young progressives in Congress having gone relatively quiet, and Democrats being urged to fall in line behind the ineffective, aging president, we are at risk of an election that kills whatever momentum the left still has.

While there have been exciting victories for progressives at the local and state level, in 2024 it looks like we're just going to have to stare on in horror as an unpopular and uninspiring president tries to eke out a victory and give us another four years of yet more disappointment and demoralization.

Personally, I think the reluctance of progressive Democrats to challenge (or even, for the most part, criticize) Joe Biden is highly damaging to the progressive movement. If voters mostly agree that Biden ought to go, the job of the party is to hold an actual competitive primary where a successor is selected.

Sadly it looks like the viable choices facing Democratic primary voters are going to be "Biden" or "Biden," and while I might hope the Williamson campaign catches fire or Cornel West ditches the fringe People's Party and challenges the president in the primary, it looks increasingly like there's just not going to be the kind of energizing anti-establishment left candidacy that so excited many of us in 2016 and 2020.

Nathan J. Robinson is the editor in chief of Current Affairs magazine and the author of Responding to the Right: Brief Replies to 25 Conservative Arguments.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.