President Biden defended his candidacy to congressional Democrats by arguing that the Democratic nomination process was open to anyone who wanted to run, despite the fact that the DNC conspired to ensure there would be no meaningful challengers or debates.
In his two-page letter defending his candidacy to congressional Democrats this week, President Biden made no attempt to address any of the important questions regarding his age, his mental competence, his disastrous debate performance or recent polling that 74 percent of all Americans — including 59 percent of Democrats — believe he is too old to serve another term.
Instead, his letter led with the argument that, “We had a Democratic nomination process and the voters have spoken clearly and decisively. I received over 14 million votes, 87 percent of the votes cast across the entire nominating process.…This was a process open to anyone who wanted to run.....Do we now just say this process didn’t matter? That the voters don’t have a say?”
This argument is absurd. Biden, his campaign team and the Democratic National Committee conspired to make sure that the presidential primaries were a totally meaningless process.
Party leaders repeatedly argued that anyone who chose to challenge an incumbent president would weaken Biden’s candidacy and increase the probability of a Trump victory in November. It was well understood that any candidate who stepped forward to mount a meaningful challenge to the incumbent would be viewed as a disloyal Democrat and would have no future within the party.
In March 2023, almost a year before the first primary, the DNC declared its full support for Biden, despite 58 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters preferring someone else, according to a poll from the previous month.
The deep bench of attractive potential Democratic candidates all fell into line, and the only challengers who appeared on any state ballots were Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), Marianne Williamson and Jason Palmer, none of whom had a national profile.
Further, the DNC refused to sponsor a single presidential primary debate, despite polls showing that 80 percent of Democrat voters supported debates.
It is a classic case of gaslighting to claim that this was a “process open to anyone who wanted to run” and that “voters have spoken clearly and decisively” when the president and the DNC manipulated the process to ensure that there would be no serious challengers and no debates.
When evaluating elections in other countries, political scientists define a "sham election" to be one that is held purely for show; that is, without any significant political choice or real effect on the results of the election. The Democratic Party primaries were sham elections, pure and simple.
In his letter, Biden also states “How can we stand for democracy in our nation if we ignore it in our own party?”
On this one point, Biden got it exactly right.
Jeff Alson is a Democratic voter in Scio Township, Michigan.
