Progressive lawmakers are voicing concerns over Cornel West’s third-party bid, worried that a figure they respect could cripple President Biden’s prospects in 2024.

West launched a Green Party campaign earlier this year to inject more leftism into the election cycle. He’s challenging both the Democratic and Republican establishments, raging against them in equal measure and raising the stakes of being a spoiler in the fall. 

Now, with the Republican nomination of former President Trump seeming more and more plausible, progressives are becoming more outspoken about their worries.

“I think he has a very long record of service and academic thought leadership,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told The Hill last week. “I think just right now, given the Electoral College, it's very difficult to square the very real threat of a Republican presidency … [with] the risk of giving up the very small margin of electoral votes needed to ensure that President Biden wins.”

Until recently, lawmakers on the left didn’t feel much need to voice any reservations they had about West. When he first announced he was running for president in early June, he did so under the grassroots People’s Party, without much fanfare. Democrats weren’t really applauding him but weren’t criticizing his bid, either; there seemed little cause for concern on Capitol Hill.

The shift happened after West changed his affiliation to the Green Party just a few weeks later. The move promoted bad recollections for Democrats of 2016, when third-party nominee Jill Stein captured enough votes that election analysts said helped contribute to Trump’s edge in certain states. 

The difference now is that West, unlike Stein, is a revered part of the progressive movement who has garnered goodwill from sitting members of Congress for his activism on behalf of working-class people. 

“I care about the quality of your life. I care about whether you have access to a job with a living wage, decent housing, women having control over their bodies, health care for all, de-escalating the destruction of the planet,” West said in his launch video this summer.

Some liberal lawmakers also personally know and like him, having crossed paths with him over the years. He worked as one of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) top surrogates in 2020. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who served as a campaign co-chairman for Sanders, has expressed kind sentiments about him despite publicly supporting Biden this cycle.

Biden has earned overwhelming support from the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), and no elected progressive has primaried him. Even Ocasio-Cortez, who has at times been critical of the president’s policy decisions, officially endorsed his reelection bid. And Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chairwoman of the left-leaning CPC, threw her support behind a Biden reelection effort even before he formally announced, despite initially backing Sanders in the Democratic primary last election.

The progressives coalescing around Biden are starting to share their concerns about the damage West’s bid may cause to the president’s reelection effort.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass), a prominent member of the CPC, credited West as a “thoughtful guy.” McGovern has had close proximity to West over the years in Massachusetts, where the philosopher and historian taught at Harvard University. 

But McGovern didn’t mince words about his third-party bid. 

“The stakes are too high this year, especially if Trump is the nominee,” he said. “I think everybody, including the most progressive elements of our country, need to protect our democracy by stopping Donald Trump and supporting Joe Biden.”

McGovern said he was worried about a scenario in which West gained enough traction to help the GOP nominee win again. 

“I worry about those things because Cornel West is a very effective speaker and can be very persuasive,” he said. “I am not here to question his motives or bash him, because I've followed him for many, many years, but I just wish he wasn't doing it.”

Moderate Democrats have been quick to paint West as a potential spoiler running a glorified vanity campaign. They’ve been the most publicly against possible challengers to Biden and third-party bids, including from their own centrist flank No Labels, a group that wants to recruit a credible third-party rival. 

Progressives, on the flip side, are often critical of the country’s two-party system and have been hesitant to outwardly dissuade West or other progressives from competing for the White House. Their wing proudly embraces intraparty primaries and outside bids when necessary to push a progressive agenda. Many believe that’s often better than the status quo, and it’s how several prominent progressive lawmakers rose to power themselves. 

One Squad member, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), is personally familiar with the power of insurgent campaigns. She was elected to the House in 2018 after ousting longtime Democratic Rep. Michael Capuano (Mass.) by running on a more liberal platform. 

While Pressley is still a staunch progressive, she’s more measured in her approach to the presidential election. Asked about West’s bid, she tiptoed around the issue but noted the popularity of his ideas.

“The CPC is the largest ideological caucus in Congress, which I think proves that, as the caucus continues to grow, their progressive ideas are popular,” Pressley said. 

“As much as they try to fringe and marginalize them, people want transformational change like universal basic income, like unionization, like reparations,” she said, careful not to criticize the platform that liberal candidates have run on each cycle. 

The anxiety around West is also illustrative of the broader concerns Democrats have about Biden. They understand that his approval rating isn’t where they’d like it to be, and that Trump still has a firm grip on the Republican Party. They also see poll after poll indicating that at least some percentage of voters want someone else as the Democratic nominee. In another sign of the frustrations surrounding Biden, moderate Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) has been eyeing a possible primary challenge against him.

Defenders of West’s candidacy, however, feel strongly that it’s important to let voters decide whom they prefer in an open election.

“To progressive lawmakers who prefer to name-call and to label him as a spoiler candidate, please take a moment to remember that votes are always earned and never given,” said Cullen Tiernan, a progressive activist based in New Hampshire who has been critical of the party’s establishment class. “Too many of these lawmakers have changed from, ‘We will push Biden left,’ to now, ‘We will endorse anything he does.’”

“As Dr. West says, ‘You can’t save the people if you don’t serve the people,’ and I ask: Who are you serving by trying to eliminate voices from a democratic process?”

Cheyanne M. Daniels contributed.

Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips (D) is toying with a potential 2024 primary challenge against President Biden, a development likely to bring additional scrutiny to the incumbent’s reelection campaign.  

A well-placed Democrat in the state confirmed to The Hill that Phillips is talking to various people about possibly mounting a White House challenge to Biden. 

“True in that he is talking to folks,” said the Minnesota Democrat on Friday, who hedged that Phillips hasn’t “definitively” decided to run. 

He would be the first Democratic lawmaker in either chamber of Congress to run against Biden this cycle.  

The news of his early thinking was initially reported by Politico. Phillips confirmed independently to CNN that he will meet with donors in New York City.

The idea Biden may have to face a Democratic competitor from Capitol Hill is notable. For one, Phillips is a moderate, bucking Democrats' more common concern that a progressive could primary him from the left. 

He’s also not a household name, like fellow centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), whose contemplation of a presidential run has been viewed with frustration by the party’s establishment. 

But a potential primary campaign from Phillips wouldn't entirely be a surprise. He’s at times been critical of Biden, even going as far as to say he shouldn’t run for a second term due in part to his age. At 54, Phillips is 26 years younger than the 80-year-old president.

A campaign spokesperson for Phillips did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Biden already has a handful of marginal primary challengers, including political heir Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and author Marianne Williamson. Neither has gotten enough traction to cause more than just headaches, though Democrats have recently gone after Kennedy more harshly for his inflammatory rhetoric. 

Democrats are also grappling with the unknowns that could come from philosopher Cornel West’s third-party presidential bid, which has frustrated those who see him as a potential spoiler candidate in the general election. 

A congressional challenger would add another layer of uncertainty to the race.

"Not sure what the upside is," the Minnesota Democrat said of a possible Phillips bid.

The push to expunge former President Trump’s two impeachments is putting vulnerable House Republicans in a tough political spot heading into next year’s election.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is facing growing pressure from the party’s right flank to bring the resolutions to the floor, underscoring the tight grip Trump has on the party as he seeks the GOP nomination for president.

But the moves would also put moderate Republicans at risk, as many of them are running in districts where Trump is highly unpopular. In a sign of just how politically toxic the issue is, some of these Republicans have already started pushing back against the efforts to expunge the impeachments.

“They’re silly,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) told The Hill last week. “When do we expunge a not guilty verdict?”

Bacon, who represents a swing district in Nebraska that voted for Biden in 2020, is one of several GOP members representing battleground districts who have voiced frustration over the efforts.

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) told reporters that he had questions about the purpose of the expungements given the not guilty verdicts, asking, “What is there to expunge?” Lawler’s district comfortably voted for Biden over Trump in 2020.

Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) told Politico that he would “probably not” vote for a measure expunging the impeachments. His district narrowly voted for Biden in 2020 but has leaned more in favor of Democratic candidates overall in recent years.

“This is not anything vulnerable Republicans want to talk about on the campaign trail,” said Doug Heye, a national Republican strategist. “They want to focus on all of those issues that have [President] Biden’s popularity so low and not be pulled into some Trump loyalty blood oath.”

McCarthy indicated early in his Speakership that he would consider votes on expunging Trump’s impeachments, but he officially declared his support for the efforts last month.

That came just a day after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and House GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) introduced resolutions to expunge the impeachments. Greene’s resolution would annul the first impeachment from December 2019, while Stefanik’s would do the same for the second one from January 2021.

The pressure on McCarthy to move forward with the votes has only intensified recently after comments he made questioning whether Trump was the “strongest” Republican to face President Biden in the 2024 election.

Though he later clarified that he believed Trump is “Biden’s strongest opponent,” Politico reported that he promised the former president to hold the expungement votes ahead of the August recess in an effort to placate him. McCarthy has denied making any promise.

Now, the Speaker finds himself in a precarious position, squeezed between the hard-line members who support Trump and the more moderate members who strategists say don’t want to touch the issue.

Trump was impeached first over a threat that he made to withhold U.S. military aid to Ukraine unless President Volodymyr Zelensky launched an investigation into Biden. He was impeached the second time just over a year later for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. He was acquitted by the Senate in both cases.

GOP strategists said the issue is becoming something of a third rail for House GOP members in moderate or Democratic-leaning districts.

Heye, the Republican strategist and former spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, said a vote on expungement would only harm these vulnerable members in their reelection bids regardless of whether they ultimately vote for or against it.

“It’s a no-win situation for at-risk Republicans, which is why they don’t want to even have the vote over something that may not even be constitutional,” Heye said.

But he said he does not expect the vote on expungement will happen because of the divisiveness within the conference and its questionable constitutionality. 

The Constitution states that the House has the “sole power” of impeachment, and officers of the United States can be removed from office upon conviction in an impeachment trial, but it makes no mention of expunging an impeachment or removing it from the historical record.

Rina Shah, a Republican consultant who has identified herself as the first “Never Trump” delegate in 2016, said those in “MAGA world” who most solidly stand by Trump still have significant influence on McCarthy and in the House Republican Conference because of the small donations that their voters are willing to send when they are passionate about a certain issue, like defending Trump.

She said McCarthy is more focused on satisfying the hard-liners and their voters than Trump himself.

“They are the people more likely to send $5 every time they're fired up about something. So Speaker McCarthy, again, trying to walk and chew gum here doesn't have to do this but is doing it so that he can look more like a leader,” Shah said.

She said the issue facing McCarthy is that he needs the votes of the moderate members for Republicans to keep their majority. She said this situation is only one point of an ongoing balancing act for McCarthy between the moderates and hard-liners.

“That is always the conundrum he finds himself in, is how to do this in a way where he’s making members in tough districts, he’s making them happy while at the same time really sticking his neck out to lead,” Shah said.

Tom Doherty, a New York Republican strategist, said the expungement effort is intended to “throw red meat to the base,” but is not focused on protecting moderate New York Republicans like Lawler. 

“In one way, you’ve stood up to the Washington Republican establishment, which is always more conservative than New York Republicans, but on the other hand, you wind up ticking off your voters,” he said.

Despite a disappointing performance for Republicans nationally during the November midterm elections, GOP victories in House districts in states like New York and California were key to the party winning control of the House. These districts will also be among the top targets for Democrats seeking to regain the majority in the body.

Meanwhile, Democrats warned that these more hesitant Republicans could face “accountability” over their refusal to directly speak out to denounce the effort even if they ultimately vote against the resolutions.

Democratic consultant Antjuan Seawright said moderate Republicans are “hoping and praying” that the resolutions do not come to a vote because their choice will affect them either in their primary race or the general election, as has happened before.

“They should all understand that accountability happens at the ballot box … If they do stand with McCarthy and others, forget about voting, just not speaking out loudly against it in the conversation about it, I think there will be an element of accountability for them in the next election cycle,” he said.

Seawright added that he expects more of a “clown circus show” that puts moderates in tough positions as the next election approaches.

Viet Shelton, a spokesperson for House Democrats’ campaign arm, told The Hill that vulnerable Republican incumbents have avoided addressing the multiple indictments facing Trump, and most have avoided directly and publicly condemning the “preposterous” idea of expungement.

“For the few that have desperately tried to distance themselves from it, voters will see it for what it is: empty rhetoric to distract from their long records of defending Trump no matter what,” Shelton said.

GOP strategists for their part warn that expungements votes could just force those Republicans already facing tough elections to have a steeper hill to climb.

“Why would you put folks that had an uphill race to win the first time around, why would you put them in a more difficult situation going forward?” said Doherty, the New York Republican.