Democrats are talking about replacing President Joe Biden after his historically bad debate on Thursday night, but the fact is they had their chance to replace him in the primary with Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and chose to shut him out.
That does not mean they are stuck with Biden: they will break the rules to replace him, like they did in 2008 to give Barack Obama enough delegates from disputed Florida and Michigan to take the nomination from Hillary Clinton.
But they can never again claim to be “defending democracy.” The fact is that they had a chance to face up to Biden’s age and infirmity through the democratic process, and instead they chose to rig their own primary to protect him.
They moved up the South Carolina primary, which Biden was sure to win; they stuck with their archaic system of superdelegates, which meant that Kennedy would have had to win 70% of the vote to have a chance of winning.
Former Senator Claire McCaskill, a Biden surrogate, wondered aloud on MSNBC after the debate: “How did we get here?” The answer is that Democrats rig their own primary to protect insiders, and they have done so for decades.
Obama’s greatest political achievement was creating so much cultural momentum around his campaign in 2008 that it became embarrassing for superdelegates to oppose the first potential black presidential candidate; they switched.
But having won within that system, Obama did little to reform it. His party used the superdelegate system to block Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in 2016, and it Wikileaks to expose the depth of the effort to rig the primary against him.
The party made some minor reforms, but in 2020 the leadership mobilized again to undermine Sanders after he won the first three primary contests, pressuring the other candidates to drop out and unite behind Biden as the nominee.
That is not democracy; it is oligarchy, or gerontocracy. It leads to kakistocracy — government by those least suited to run anything — because it means that party loyalty becomes the most important criterion, not appeal to the voters.
Republicans, ironically, have a relatively open primary process, where voters, not superdelegates, decide the winner. Though Republicans in some states tried to smooth Trump’s path to the 2024 nomination, he still had to work for it.
Lost in the sensational panic over Biden’s debate collapse is the fact that Biden didn’t just do poorly; Trump did very well. He was sharp; he was in command of the facts and the arguments, even if he indulged in his usual hyperbole.
Trump was ready for Thursday’ debate because he had to face primary debates against tough opponents who were trying to bring him down — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. He was fighting fit.
Biden was not ready because his handlers kept him in formaldehyde, insulated from opponents and from the press. When a serious challenge arose from Kennedy, they used every weapon at their disposal to prevent a primary contest.
They smeared him as an antisemite — just as they tried to do with Trump. They recruited Kennedy’s own relatives to trash him and to endorse Biden. (One wonders if any of them regrets destroying those family ties after last night.)
Democrats did this to themselves — and to the country. And they are still doing it. Even now, they are suing to keep Kennedy off the ballot in key states, lest he take votes from Biden.
They will come up with some way to replace Biden — perhaps with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who dutifully humiliated himself in the spin room, saying Biden won the debate on “substance.”
But it will not be a “democratic” process. The last thing the Democrats want is democracy.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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