We have now entered the “stage a coup against a sitting president endorsed by primary voters because we don’t think he can win an election” phase of “saving democracy.”
Democrats, through external and internal efforts, are pressuring President Joe Biden to step down from the presidential race. But why is the left only concerned about Biden’s candidacy? Why don’t Democrats acknowledge that if the current president is not fit to run, he’s not fit to be in office at all? It’s because they care less about the wellbeing of the nation and more about how Biden’s 2024 campaign threatens their hold on the executive branch.
Now, in an effort to avoid such a loss, the party wants to tell its primary voters to kick rocks.
But this isn’t the first step Democrats have taken to consolidate their power — er, protect “democracy” — in our Republic.
Censorship
Democrats have taken a sledgehammer to the First Amendment over the past few years, limiting what information the public can read, listen to, or watch.
After taking office, the Biden administration began a widespread coordination effort with social media companies to “censor posts” that were, as my colleague Shawn Fleetwood explained it, “deemed unfavorable, even if said posts contained factually correct information.”
A lower court judge issued a preliminary injunction last July after Missouri and Louisiana sued the Biden administration, citing an abridgment of the First Amendment. The 5th Circuit later upheld the injunction in September before the Supreme Court gutted the First Amendment in a June decision, permitting the censorship activities to go forward.
CNN described the implication of the ruling as permitting the Department of Homeland Security to continue “to flag posts to social media companies such as Facebook and X that it believes may be the work of foreign agents seeking to disrupt this year’s presidential race.”
But unelected bureaucrats also censored the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020, alleging it was the work of “foreign agents” who wanted to disrupt the election. As I previously explained, the media, government, and tech gatekeepers weaponize false claims of “foreign interference” to malign — and sometimes silence — opponents.
Kicking Their Opponent off the Ballot
Colorado became the first state to remove former president Donald Trump from the primary ballot after a left-wing activist group backed a challenge from Colorado voters to disqualify him under the 14th Amendment. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled in December that Trump was ineligible to appear on the ballot. Maine made a similar move, along with a county in Illinois where Judge Tracie Porter ordered Trump be removed from the primary ballot after the board of elections unanimously voted against removing him. Porter ruled Trump should be removed from the ballot and ordered “any votes for him to be suppressed.”
The U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision overturning the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling and found states did not have the constitutional authority to boot Trump from the ballot.
When that didn’t work, Democrats focused their efforts on tossing their opponent in jail.
Using Lawfare to Throw Opponents in Jail
Trump was originally slated to be sentenced on July 11 after a Manhattan District Attorney — who campaigned on nailing Trump — charged and secured a conviction against the former president for 34 felonies that no one could properly define. The prosecution team included Matthew Colangelo, who previously served as the No. 3 in Biden’s Department of Justice. A Biden donor oversaw the case, instituting gag orders prohibiting Trump from calling out the biased prosecution.
In addition to the risk of jail time, Democrats’ lawfare against Trump is also designed to bleed him of valuable campaigning time and money, as seen in a civil fraud case in New York in which Trump was ordered to pay a bond of $175 million to appeal the decision.
Special Counsel Jack Smith has brought charges against Trump for questioning the administration of the 2020 election and allegedly mishandling classified documents. Notably, Smith’s appointment has been scrutinized by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and is now being challenged before Judge Aileen Cannon, who oversees Smith’s classified documents case against Trump in Florida. (Biden also was found to have likely mishandled classified documents, but Special Counsel Robert Hur chose not to pursue charges over concerns that Biden would appear “elderly” and sympathetic before a jury.)
Trump also faces charges in Georgia for challenging the results of the 2020 election.
What’s more, to save “democracy,” Democrats are throwing people who ignore Congressional subpoenas in jail. But not the “15 cabinet officials in the Biden administration [who] continue to defy congressional subpoenas” or “Merrick Garland, the attorney general of the United States, [who] continues to insist he’s above Congress,” as my colleague M.D. Kittle reported. Instead, the only two individuals who have been thrown in jail for defying a congressional subpoena are Trump allies Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro.
Democrats Prevented a Real Primary
The most important part of the left’s “democracy” schtick is giving people the freedom to vote, so long as it’s for the approved candidate — who has, up until this point, been Joe Biden.
Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips attempted to secure the Democratic nomination, saying he was running due to his long-standing concerns about Biden’s fitness for office.
Phillips said Biden would “lose to Donald Trump” while speaking to Forbes. In fact, Phillips was rebuked by members of his own party for raising concerns in October that Biden wasn’t the right candidate for the Democrat Party. Before stepping down as co-chair of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, Phillips described the ability to speak his mind as being stifled. He said, according to CNN, that his “position on 2024 was ‘causing discomfort’” for Democratic leadership.
Consider how Florida Democrats chose to award Biden the state’s delegates in November rather than holding a presidential primary, and how the Democratic National Committee moved its first primary to South Carolina last minute — a state credited with helping gin up support for Biden during the 2020 primary races — rather than hold it in New Hampshire.
In the meantime, Democrats have worked in states across the country to keep independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. off the ballot out of fears he might spoil Biden’s votes. Kennedy was also excluded from the recent presidential debate hosted by Democrat-friendly network CNN.
“A well-financed candidate consistently polling with the support of more than 1 in 10 Americans for months on end is clearly a major contender worthy of a podium,” my colleague Tristan Justice wrote. Kennedy has said that Biden’s censorship regime is arguably a “worse threat to democracy” than Trump.
Democrats will spare no expense to protect their “democracy.” Clearly, they’re willing to use every anti-democratic measure to consolidate power, from throwing their political opponents in jail, censoring anyone who disagrees with their approved narrative, ignoring the will of their primary voters, and potentially ousting a sitting president because they think he might lose an election.
If Democrats are willing to eat their own, what else are they willing to do these next few months to secure a victory in November?
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.
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