For some time, Democrats have been the party of the elite; now, even that is not enough.
As party brass scramble to oust President Biden, America is witnessing an attempted coup by the elite’s elite. Gone is any pretext that this is the “demos” or the people, governing. Today’s Democratic Party is about the aristocracy ruling.
Democrats are indisputably the party of America’s elite. The evidence is omnipresent. The top echelons of academia, media, entertainment, sports and corporate America all are overwhelmingly Democratic. The policies these groups embrace — bigger government, higher taxes, environmental extremism, DEI, open borders, pro-Palestine, and more — are all Democratic priorities.
Democrats have sought to hide their obvious diversion away from the people and to the elite. They continually flash for those willing to look their historical roots in Jefferson and Jackson — even as they now renounce these men. Rhetorically, they wrap themselves in “for the people,” a phrase with which former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) frequently closed her missives to Democratic members. But sometimes, reality’s obviousness is simply too much to escape.
For the Democratic elite, such too has become President Biden’s performance. Jarring as Biden’s debate performance was, even more so was the Democratic elite’s response to it: They turned en masse and on a dime.
Truthfully, what Biden showed on the debate stage with Trump was nothing Americans hadn’t seen or heard countless times in innumerable settings. And of course, there were the rumors (including his oral testimony to special counsel Robert Hur). On the debate stage, there were gaffes (Biden has called himself a gaffe machine) and shambling.
But for most of us, like the children in the “Emperor Who Wore No Clothes,” the monarch was no more naked than we had seen him before. Our shock came from the benighted “adults,” Democratic elites, finally seeing it — or at least, finally admitting it.
The true revelation of Biden’s debate was the unmasking of the Democratic elite. For six decades, the Democratic Party has ostensibly dispersed power from its leaders to its followers. Primaries’ dominance in selecting the party’s presidential nominee has grown, often in leaps (notably from 1968 to 1972 and then after 2016 with the curtailment of super delegates’ voting powers) but always consistently.
The process worked for the party, especially its elite. It was part of the rhetorical cover: as the party diverged from the American people, it turned over more of its power to its own people.
But beneath this patina, the party’s leaders usually got their way: Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders in 2016; Biden salvaged a too-left candidate contingent in 2020 and dispatched their “bete noire” simultaneously.
The process was ratcheted to an even higher level in 2024. The path was greased for Biden, there was no Sanders challenge from the left, and Biden was virtually unanimously chosen by the delegates. Even the official nomination was made virtual in order to accelerate it.
After all, the process had worked for the Democratic elite. That is, until it didn’t.
What became clear was that Biden was not going to beat Trump. Since his State of the Union speech, he had gained no traction and little if any ground against Trump. Despite administration giveaways (still more student loan forgiveness, aggressive environmental regulations, and more) surrogate appearances, huge campaign spending — even a New York felony conviction — Biden trailed not just in the all-important battleground states, but nationally too.
So, after all of Biden’s actions failed, the Democratic elite presumed to take their own. They sought to orchestrate — and thereby control — what they feared most. Rather than allowing Trump to beat Biden in November, they would do it preemptively. By undercutting Biden, they would present him with a fait accompli.
Their opposition has mounted. Their defenses of him have lacked enthusiasm. (Pelosi’s “it’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run” is a hollow example: saying that a candidate who is being pushed to withdraw over questions of cognitive ability can also decide his fate is more than slightly disingenuous.)
The Democratic elite running from Biden is running to the “smoke-filled room” of yore — only this time without the smoke and without the room. Here they desire to pick the nominee in full view in broad daylight and in public. They are because they fear that the candidate they cleared the way for, for whom they covered, is going to lose and take them with him.
The Democratic elite created all of this: Biden never had a modicum of presidential success before 2020. Ultimately, they, not him, will be held responsible. Now having deemed that he cannot win, they are seeking to take matters into their own hands — and out of the delegates’. If unable to win, they will ensure he is unable to run.
It has long been clear that the Democratic Party is not about "democracy," about the people ruling — after all, the threat they seek to thwart is an unmistakably populist threat. It is now no longer even about the elite ruling. It is about the elite’s elite ruling. And they are now so desperate that they no longer care who knows.
J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987-2000, served in the Department of Treasury and Office of Management and Budget from 2001-2004, and was director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004-2023.
