You may be starting to detect a pattern here. First, they did it to RFK in New York. And now, they have removed independent presidential candidate Cornel West from the ballot in Michigan. This could have a much bigger impact than removing RFK, for reasons we'll address shortly. But the excuse they came up with for removing him was, if anything, even weaker than the one put forward to give Kennedy the old heave-ho. Call me paranoid if you wish, but it's almost as if the Democrats don't want voters to show up at the polls on November 5 and see the name of anyone from any party or no party at all on their ballots except for Kamala Harris. Why do you suppose that might be? (USA Today)

The Michigan Bureau of Elections on Friday disqualified independent presidential candidate Cornel West, the civil rights activist and philosopher, along with his running mate from appearing on the Nov. 5 General Election ballot over a technical violation of state law.

Jonathan Brater, Michigan's elections director, wrote the West campaign a letter dated Friday saying that the affidavits of identity submitted to the Secretary of State's Office in June for West and his vice presidential running mate, Melina Abdullah, were not properly notarized.

The West campaign did not immediately respond to an email from the Detroit Free Press, a USA TODAY Network partner, about the disqualification on Friday.

First of all, let's find out what Cornel West did which was so terrible that he should be pulled from the ballot. Did he shoot a man in Reno, just to watch him die? No, it was nothing quite that dramatic. USA Today describes it as "a technical violation," but even that seems a bit generous. The Michigan elections director sent a letter to West's campaign saying that his affidavits of identity submitted with his ballot application were "not properly notarized." West's affidavit was notarized in Colorado and needed to meet all of that state's requirements to be valid in Michigan as well. There were apparently a couple of boxes left blank and the notary public stamp for the affidavit was attached on a separate piece of paper rather than on the document itself.

Yes, that was it. That was the entirety of the complaint. In fairness to the Michigan elections director, they did send West's campaign a letter in late July giving him a couple of weeks to respond and West never responded. This should have all been able to be cleaned up easily, but it wasn't so the Democrats pounced. The original complaint was filed by former Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer in case you're wondering why I'm generically blaming "the Democrats" here.

So what's the real reason behind all of this and why would the Democrats care about Cornel West? He wasn't going to carry any states or win the White House. That's certainly true unless some sort of portal of doom opened under our feet between now and November. But that doesn't mean that Cornel West's presence or absence might not have a significant impact on the final results. This would be particularly true in Michigan where the presidential race is tighter than razor wire. The last polling we have from Michigan including West in the mix is from more than a week ago and it pitts Trump against Biden, not Harris, so keep that in mind. But it still showed West pulling four percent, taking it almost entirely from the Democrat, in a race that currently has Trump leading by only one. If those numbers hold with Harris's name replacing Biden's, Cornel West could sink the Democrats there and potentially cost them the electoral college.

That's the reality of what is going on behind the scenes. Despite both being liberals themselves, much like RFK, Cornel West was identified as a potential threat to Biden and now to Harris. So he had to go. They scraped up Mark Brewer to have someone pore over West's ballot application documents with a magnifying glass and find some sort of flaw to use as a basis for their complaint. They did the same thing when questioning RFK's home state address. They found a compliant judge to go along with a trivial complaint over what amounted to a technicality and West was unceremoniously kicked to the curb. Welcome to the rough and tumble world of modern Democratic politics as they desperately scramble to maintain their hold on power at any cost.