Cornel West says Biden is 'running out of gas,' predicts he will drop out of 2024 race

Dr. Cornel West has cast doubts on whether Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee, suggesting in a recent interview with Politico that the president may not have the ability to make it to 2024.

West, who began his presidential ambitions as a candidate for the Green Party but recently dropped them in favor of running as an independent, said he wouldn't be surprised if Biden called it quits and let a Democrat from what he deemed the "B-Team" take over as head of the party.
 

"I'm not even sure whether I'll be running against Biden," West told Politico reporters and editors. "I think he's going to have an LBJ moment [and] pull back."

By "LBJ moment," he was referring to the 1968 election, wherein Democratic president Lyndon B. Johnson surprisingly and suddenly dropped out the race, citing tensions within the party and the nation at large regarding the war in Vietnam. His successor and vice president, Herbert Humphreys, went on to lose the election to Republican Richard Nixon.

"I'm just saying that I'm open to those possibilities given the fluidity of the situation," West said, suggesting that the octogenarian president was "running out of gas."

He went on to describe Biden as a "milquetoast neoliberal with military adventurism, possibly leading the world toward World War III," and noted that while he was more concerned about him on a foreign policy level, at a domestic level Trump was the bigger threat.

West described the former president and Republican frontrunner as a "bona fide gangsta, Neo fascist, Pied Piper leading the country for the second civil war."

In a statement to Politico, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said West "should go back to liberal academia instead of playing pretend politics," suggesting he "still hasn't graduated from the kids table."

By the time Americans take to the polls in 2024, Biden will be just days shy of his 82nd birthday, and would be closer to 90 years old by the time his second term ended.

Nonetheless, his campaign has maintained that he has what it takes to keep going.