The party that claims to be the savior of democracy is about to go back into smoke-filled rooms to choose a presidential candidate.
With this week’s announcement that President Joe Biden is dropping out of the presidential race because he’s unfit to run (but curiously not leaving office), the Democrat Party Machine is moving to coronate Vice President Kamala Harris as the candidate of choice. But more than 14 million voters cast ballots for Biden in this year’s primary season, with more than 99 percent of the party’s pledged delegates loyal to the old coot less than a month ago.
No worries, say the DNC powers-that-be. We’ll just give Biden’s votes to the vice president, the ambassador of cackle is about as popular as Joe Biden, which is to say she is about as popular as pink eye.
“They are going to be overturning the verdict of Democrat voters in states across the country,” Heritage Foundation election law expert Hans von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission, said in an interview. “They’re making it more like the kind of conventions we used to have in this country, with smoke-filled, backroom deals.”
‘Quickly Embraced’
The Democrats’ race to consolidate power less than a month ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago is being done with little regard for the rules and the election laws in place that govern the process.
Things are moving so fast that the Democratic National Committee, as of Wednesday morning, has yet to update the convention homepage to note that the party’s standard bearer — up until his disastrous debate performance nearly a month ago — has been thrown under the leftist bus.
“Democrats will rally around Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ nomination for President and Vice President of the United States,” the outdated website declares. “The 2024 Democratic Convention in Chicago will show America what President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Democrats stand for … .”
Of course, what the party clearly stands for is power, and standing with Biden is no longer a viable path to holding on to power.
The establishment rats have been scurrying to silence any internal opposition from Dems who have more than a sneaking suspicion that there are more competent candidates than border czar Kamala.
“Powerful leaders of the Democratic establishment quickly embraced Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday after President Biden’s shocking exit from the race, hoping that a seamless succession could end a month of damaging chaos and transform a contest widely believed to be tipping toward Republicans,” the New York Times, chief media sponsor of the quiet coup to remove the octogenarian Biden, reported earlier this week.
“Endorsements cascaded in as the vice president took swift control of the Biden campaign in a transformed contest, though some key Democrats, including Barack Obama, did not immediately back her,” the leftist publication reported, sending the message that, open convention be damned, Kamala’s the party’s anointed one.
But like Harris’ romantic past, it’s complicated.
‘Complicated Mess’
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has said the Democratic Party likely faces some legal challenges in heaving Biden from the November ballot, no matter who his replacement is.
The Heritage Foundation Oversight Project’s draft memo in June stated that swing states Wisconsin, Georgia, and Nevada in particular have fixed deadlines in place for candidates appearing on ballots. According to the memo, these “[t]hree of the expected six most contested states have some potential for pre-election litigation aimed at exasperating, with legitimate concerns for election integrity, the withdrawal process for a presidential candidate.” The memo explains how Heritage is exploring such timelines and litigation in the battleground states.
Emory Law professor Alicia Hughes told States Newsroom days before the announcement of Biden’s withdrawal that “such a scenario would be ‘a complicated mess with an unpredictable outcome that very likely could end up at the steps of a very conservative United States Supreme Court.’”
DNC lawfare thugs are itching for a fight.
“There is a zero point zero, zero, zero percent chance that Mike Johnson and his fever dream of somehow there being legal action to prevent Kamala Harris… to keep [her] off the ballot, there is no chance that will happen,” morally suspect leftist lawfare practitioner Mike Elias, peddler of the phony Russian dossier, told the left-wing mouthpiece Democracy Watch.
Corporate media have quickly pushed the narrative that there’s nothing to see here, asserting no official nominee, no foul. Election officials who have been criticized for failing to secure elections are circling the wagons, too
Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for Georgia’s secretary of state’s office, posted on X that “Biden dropping out will not impact Georgia ballots. As the Democrats haven’t had a convention, there is no ‘nominee’ to replace.”
Von Spakvosky says Biden’s party has to act fast.
“As you know most of states have deadlines in August, with a few in early September when the head of the political party has to certify to election administrators who the candidate is so ballots can be printed,” von Spakovsky said of the varying deadlines.
Most of the deadlines are set for “late August or during the first two weeks of September,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. That’s when states start “finalizing and printing ballots.”
“Some states begin sending absentee ballots more than 45 days before the election, but all states must have ballots finalized, printed and ready to send 45 days prior to the election for military and overseas voters, as required by federal law,” NCSL notes.
“He Who Makes the Rules …”
Von Spakvosky, manager of Heritage’s Election Law Reform Initiative, said under DNC rules and many state laws, delegates are supposed to be bound on the first vote on the floor of the convention. But the DNC rules committee, slated to meet Wednesday, holds the cards.
“I’m assuming they will quickly have a vote to change the rule so that delegates will have a vote to determine whoever the anointed one is,” von Spakovsky said.
But DNC chairman Jaime Harrison insists the process will be “transparent” and “orderly,” even as the establishment and the party’s corporate media public relations firm rally around Harris.
“In the coming days, the party will undertake a transparent and orderly process to move forward,” Harrison said in a statement. “This process will be governed by established rules and procedures of the party. Our delegates are prepared to take seriously their responsibility in swiftly delivering a candidate to the American people.”
Money Money Money
Kamala’s likely to get the campaign cash, too. As of June 20, the most recent day the Biden/Harris campaign had to file a campaign finance report, the Biden-led ticket had $91.5 million in cash on hand. In a column for Fox News, von Spakovsky noted that there is “no requirement in federal law for campaign committees to provide refunds to donors who want to get their contributions returned. It would be entirely up to the Biden for President committee to decide whether it wants to provide refunds if donors request them.”
Because Biden has already endorsed his vice president, it’s clear he wants the money to stay with Harris, who is also listed on the principal campaign committee. Biden would be prohibited from distributing the brunt of the campaign funds to a candidate other than Harris, under FEC regulations. But von Spakovsky clarified “there is no limit on the transfer of funds from a candidate committee to party committees. Biden for President could, therefore, transfer all of its cash to the Democratic National Committee, Democratic congressional and senatorial committees, and state and local party committees, which could then use the money to support their federal, state and local candidates.”
There has already been legal pushback from the GOP on the transfer of funds as the Trump campaign filed a Tuesday complaint with the FEC reportedly claiming that “Kamala Harris is seeking to perpetrate a $91.5 million dollar heist of Joe Biden’s leftover campaign cash — a brazen money grab that would constitute the single largest excessive contribution and biggest violation in the history of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended.”
The Harris campaign also claims it raised a record $81 million within the 24 hours following Biden’s announcement, an assertion the Associated Press thirstily lapped up.
Republicans have accused Democrats of “rigging their own elections.”
“It looks like, dare we say it, an insurrection,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said during an appearance Sunday on Fox News. “It is hysterically funny, or would be, if not for the fact that Democrats have persecuted good Americans — half of the country and more — for the last three years doing exactly what they’re doing now. This is a joke.”
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
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