The Long-Shot Candidate Who Has the White House Worried

Pull up a sticky green lawn chair, everyone. It’s time for another round of Mounting Democratic Jitters, cherished summer pastime from Wilmington to the West Wing. Today’s installment: Cornel West, unlikely MAGA accessory.

West, the famed academic and civil-rights activist, is a Green Party candidate for president. He probably will not win. Not a single state or, in all likelihood, a single electoral vote. But he remains a persistent object of concern around the president these days.

I’ve talked with many of these White House worrywarts, along with their counterparts on Joe Biden’s reelection team and the usual kettles of Democratic anxiety who start bubbling up whenever the next existential-threat election is upon us. Even with the nuisance primary challenger Robert F. Kennedy Jr. polling in the double digits, West inhabits a particular category of Democratic angst, the likes of which only the words Green Party presidential candidate can elicit.

You can understand the sensitivities, given the