Presidential Debate: End of Democracy

The Democrats spend a great deal of time talking about “threats to our democracy.” January 6, Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans are a few of the most common “threats” they cite. At the South Shore Press, we have consistently tried to frame that narrative through what we believe is its proper lens. Our “democracy” is nothing more than the people’s ability to choose their elected leaders and replace them when those leaders fail to enact the will of the people. As long as that process exists, and elections are fair and honest, our democracy is intact. Period.

What we are watching from the Democrats, playing out in slow motion for everyone to see, is what we view as a hijacking of that democratic process. The Democratic primary ended on June 8. Millions of Democratic voters around the country cast their ballots to select their candidate for president. Despite years of obvious signs of cognitive decline and embarrassing public moments, the media and the Democratic establishment insisted that Joe Biden was “as sharp as ever” and that he was unquestionably their candidate. They allowed millions of voters to cast ballots for Joe Biden.

They called for a presidential debate on June 27, a highly unusual move since debates before party conventions and before candidates are officially nominated are rare. They marched Joe Biden onto the stage, seemingly without meaningful preparation, and allowed him to embarrass himself and, in the eyes of many, the country. Then, within moments of the debate ending, virtually every major media outlet declared the performance a “train wreck” and openly called for Biden’s removal. And here we are.

At this point, it may hardly be worth pointing out that the media is not trustworthy, but this particular case was unusually brazen. Every American had witnessed Joe Biden fumbling his words, stumbling on and off stages, and appearing confused in public for years. Those same media professionals witnessed that behavior and repeatedly defended Biden, claiming he had a stutter, simply had a bad moment, or had merely “chosen not to dance.”

Only a week earlier, the White House press secretary insisted that videos of Biden wandering during events in Normandy and appearing disengaged at a Juneteenth celebration were “cheap fakes,” dismissing concerns about his mental condition as conspiracy theories from MAGA Republicans. Then, immediately after the debate, the entire media apparatus appeared to arrive at the same conclusion simultaneously: Biden was in decline and needed to be removed from the ballot. You would have been hard-pressed to find a single member of the ten-person panels on CNN or MSNBC disagreeing with that view. Odd.

And now here we are. The primary season is over. Voters no longer have a say in who the Democratic candidate for president will be. Six months earlier, had Biden withdrawn from the race, it is quite possible that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would have won the Democratic nomination. Perhaps that is why this charade was perpetuated. But now the candidate will be chosen in a back room, removed from the desires of the voters. Democratic voters will instead be handed the establishment’s preferred candidate. A three-month campaign will be run, the replacement will almost certainly be hailed by the media as a hero for stepping in on short notice, and that person will be tasked with “saving democracy” from Donald Trump.

Ensuring that nobody gets to vote for the person tasked with saving democracy is, in our view, precisely the kind of democracy Democrats now offer. Voters having no say in the process is the opposite of democracy. And here we are.