Opinion: I’m a longtime Republican. I’m voting for Cornel West.

It is natural to view voting in tactical terms. Especially now, when so much of our conception of democracy is wrapped up solely in the act of voting, it is easy to fall into a way of thinking that says the only way to take democracy seriously is not only to vote but also to vote for one of the two major party candidates.
Yet, that is a flawed and narrow way of understanding democracy. There is value in voting, and there is also value in not voting. Either can be an expression of one’s convictions about the sort of society we wish to see, or to not see, in America.
In the 2024 presidential election, I will cast what in political science terms is unfortunately referred to as a “wasted vote.” I will vote for professor Cornel West, but I do not feel that my vote will be wasted in doing so.
I am a longtime Republican (a former Republican nominee for Congress in fact) who feels disaffected from the mainstream Republican Party. Although I disagree with the ad hominem tactics and attitudes of groups like The Lincoln Project, I sympathize with the beleaguered never-Trump wing of the GOP, which feels that Donald Trump must be opposed within the party because of his character and divisiveness, and for the threat he poses to democracy. I cast my vote in the Republican primary for Mike Pence on this basis.
Yet, I part company from many of my never-Trump Republican friends in viewing the failures of the Democratic Party and its allied interests as not incomparable to those of the modern GOP.
My grievances stem largely from the political left’s catastrophic misrepresentation of matters of race and policing in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, its inattention to public safety in the context of illegal immigration, its narrow and excessive commitment to lockdowns in the face of COVID-19 (something for which Trump also bears responsibility), and its willingness to mislead the American people about the mental fitness of the sitting president of the United States.
Opinion:This doctor admitted COVID pandemic mistakes. Then his critics attacked him again.
I have little specific grievance with Vice President Kamala Harris other than that she appears to me as a cog in the progressive Democratic wheel. But it is the wheel that I have trouble voting for.
I live in California, where the electoral outcome we can take as settled. That fact affords me the luxury to vote my conscience. Yet, the most notable third-party candidates in this race are more substantive than the major party candidates, and more dignified as well.
That includes Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Though dismissed as a conspiracy theorist, Kennedy delivers a compelling indictment of the Democratic Party establishment and, beyond his criticisms of our lockdown policies (for which I have some sympathy), draws attention to other major issues of concern that Harris and Trump refuse to notice, including the corruption of food safety standards.
Kennedy decided to endorse Trump without thoroughly interrogating the former president’s stolen election claims, his unwillingness to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and the events of Jan. 6, 2021. I believe that endorsement represented Kennedy’s final rebellion against a political party that he feels betrayed him, but he failed to account for the breadth of the anti-democratic actions undertaken by both parties in recent years.
Still, Kennedy has campaigned with respect for the convictions of Democratic, independent and Republican voters, without devolving into ad hominem insults of his opponents. For this, he has my respect.
Cornel West, meanwhile, has received less attention for his independent candidacy than Kennedy has. In any conventional analysis of the political spectrum, it is possible I have less in common with West than I do with any other candidate in the race.
West is avowedly a man of the left. His progressive politics are an agitation to standard liberal Democrats (and anathema to conservative Republicans). If policy were the only factor, West would likely not be a consideration at all for a moderately conservative Republican like myself.
But policy is not the only consideration for me in this election. It shouldn’t be for America, either.
American politics are beset with a crisis in our civic condition and in our understanding of human dignity, and ultimately, with a spiritual crisis in a society that is flailing for a sense of meaning.
Opinion:Conservatives trashed NPR’s new CEO for being ‘woke.’ But the truth is far more complex.
At the root of our crises of institutional credibility and basic political functioning is a tribal-political culture in which our leaders, political parties and media institutions fail to treat opposition and dissent with dignity and empathy.
This bleeds down to the way we treat our neighbors in this age of polarization. We fail, too, in our culture war politics and our petty political gamesmanship, to center our debates around the plight of the poor at home, the suffering abroad and those who are most disadvantaged in society as a result of the shortcomings of not just our policies but also the ethical hollowness of our political culture.
And all of this is in reinforced in our modern age by a way of life that seeks fulfillment through material consumption, through status and glamour, through the glorification of violence and ego in the void of deeper spiritual commitments, through which crass partisan politics rushes to fill the void.
I will cast my ballot in support of West not merely on the basis of his current candidacy but in recognition of the example he has set as both a scholar and activist across a life’s vocation that has sought to elevate the conscience of American society to a plane in which we find deeper meaning − crossing the chasms of our differences to heal the wounds of the vulnerable.
West’s career also is inspiring in the way he has pursued his vocation in the face of political divides.
Opinion:What worries election officials from six swing states the most this year
West is most recognizable as a voice for social justice and as a leader in the Black community. Yet, he stands out among most others who share that description.
A prodigious scholar (he is the author of at least 20 books and has edited at least 13 more) West’s best known work is a collection of essays, “Race Matters.” Published in 1993, soon after the Rodney King beating and the Los Angeles riots, the moment was ripe for any leader who wanted to make a name for himself by inflaming the passions of racial animus by angrily calling attention to the need for justice.
West, the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary, did marshal a righteous indignation in reviving a call for justice in “Race Matters.” But he also did something much deeper.
In a moment of passion and volatility that was hardly conducive to nuance and an insightful overview of the forces driving Black rage and Black identity in America, West not only acknowledged but humanized the cultural and political contributions of Black liberals and progressives, Black nationalists and even Black conservatives.
His critiques of each of these groups are cutting. Yet, there is not an ounce of meanness in his criticism. West’s analyses of the strengths and weaknesses of these ideological factions in the Black community also were fair and accurate.
He wrote in the original introduction of the book that, “The predictable pitting of liberals against conservatives, Great Society Democrats against self-help Republicans, reinforces intellectual parochialism and political paralysis.”
West asserted that the common flaw of each side is in identifying Black people as a problem to be managed in American society, an attitude that is less than humanizing.
Three decades later, West is still in deep public dialogue with the likes of Glenn Loury, an economist and noted Black conservative intellectual. Two of their conversations can be found on “The Glenn Show,” including one in which West responds to a defense Loury made of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a political pariah among progressive Black Americans:
“Brother Clarence has always been my political foe and my ideological enemy, there’s no doubt about that. But I can still stay in contact with his humanity, I can be concerned about his loved ones and family, and we clash. And people say ‘Oh brother West, (Thomas) just pushed through legislation that’s taking back the rights of women.’ I say ‘I know, that’s why I hit the streets. That’s why I defend reproductive rights. … But he is deeply a sincere right-wing brother. … In the Black community we’ve always had conservative folk. They’ve been part of the community.”
West’s use of the terms “brother” and “sister” is not exclusively reserved for Black people but for all people with whom he feels a human connection. And he seeks relentlessly to connect with people on a human level.
Almost alone among progressives, West manages to consistently cultivate respectful and even brotherly discourse with the most pugilistic of conservative pundits, including the likes of Fox News’ Sean Hannity and many others, even on issues as direly fraught as Israelis and Palestinians.
Opinion:Pager attack in Lebanon was terrorism. And American tax dollars helped pay for it.
Opposition to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza has become the animating crusade of the West presidential campaign, and his commitment to the rights and liberties of the Palestinians is longstanding. Yet, West’s solidarity with the Jewish people, his honoring of the historic relationship between the Jewish and African American communities and his opposition to antisemitism are equally longstanding.
A reverence for the deeper heritage of American and Western civilization. A commitment to intellectual inquiry and the free exchange of ideas. A moral commitment to the plight of the poor and downtrodden. A proven commitment to treating even his opponents with dignity and bridging the divide. These are the virtues of Cornel West.
In voting for the man, even as a Republican, I vote for these virtues. It will not result in West landing in the White House. But it gives me the opportunity to vote for the kind of values and the spirit of politics I would like to one day see represented in the White House and in the prevailing ethos of American democracy.
Because Cornel West chose to run for president, I can cast a vote I actually believe in.
This column was originally published in USA TODAY.
John Wood Jr. is a columnist for USA TODAY Opinion. He is national ambassador for Braver Angels, a former nominee for Congress, former vice chairman of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County, musical artist, and a noted writer and speaker on subjects including racial and political reconciliation. Follow him on X: @JohnRWoodJr