Memo to Democrats: Democracy means letting people vote

There’s something about the human condition that gives us the impulse to turn our private demons into our public crusades.

How often do we hear stories about preachers who rail against gays and end up getting caught doing something illicit in a truck stop bathroom?

Or Hollywood actors who lecture all of us about global warming, but refuse to fly anything other than private?

Political parties do the same thing.

In a campaign strategy memo shared first with CNN, the Biden/Harris reelection campaign outlined a plan to make the alleged threat to democracy posed by former President Trump a central focus of their reelection campaign.

The crux of that argument, campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in the memo is that, “(t)he choice for voters next year will not simply be between competing philosophies of governing. The choice for the American people in November 2024 will be about protecting American democracy and the very individual freedoms we enjoy as Americans.”

The memo said the campaign will spend its next year convincing voters that Trump poses an “existential threat to democracy” by way of his “ability to incite political violence and wage attacks on our democracy and freedom.”

Here’s the problem.  When you review the actual behavior of the ‘party of democracy,’ their plan to ‘save’ democracy is exactly the opposite: to take the choice of selecting our leaders away from voters.

The party of hashtag-voting-rights has become the party of anti-voters-rights.  The party of the-more-candidates-the-merrier has become the we’ll-decide-who-gets-to-run-for-office party.

Up is down, black is white, Chris Christie is now Celine Dion.

Let’s start with the primary.

Joe Biden’s approval numbers are straight up awful.

According to the most recent Gallup poll, 59 percent of voters disapprove of the president’s performance, with only 39 percent approving.

Gallup described Biden’s position in the Democratic Party as such: “Biden enters 2024 with a persistently low job approval rating, the worst of any modern-day president heading into a tough reelection campaign.”

So what do the Democrats do to protect Biden from generating a credible challenger in the primary?  Change the voting calendar to protect Biden, of course!

In February, The Democratic National Committee near-unanimously approved a reconfigured presidential primary calendar, rubber-stamped by the White House, at the group’s winter gathering.

Under the new calendar, the 2024 Democratic presidential primary begins in South Carolina — the state that revived President Joe Biden’s campaign in the 2020 contest — on February 3, 2024.

That primary is to be followed by Nevada and New Hampshire on February 6, Georgia on February 13, and Michigan on February 27.

Anti-Trumpers grumble that the date for the New Hampshire primary isn’t set in stone, but this is New Hampshire we’re talking about.  It might actually be carved into a rock someplace there.

Just in case that doesn’t work, the Democrats have also resorted to canceling primary elections all together.

The state of Florida will not hold a presidential primary election for Democrats this cycle, after the state party submitted only President Joe Biden’s name as a candidate up for the nomination.

In response, Dean Phillips, a congressman from Minnesota and Democratic challenger to Biden told Politico, “Americans would expect the absence of democracy in Tehran, not Tallahassee…The intentional disenfranchisement of voters runs counter to everything for which our Democratic Party and country stand. Our mission as Democrats is to defeat authoritarians, not become them.”

And, heck…why stop at kicking your primary opponents off the ballot when you could kick your general election foes off too?  Especially ones you’re losing to in the polls!

Earlier this month the all Democrat Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Donald Trump is ineligible to be president again and would be prohibited from appearing on the ballot.

Soon after, California’s bird-brained Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis — who is running for governor — asked California Secretary of State Shirley Weber to examine removing Trump from the California ballot.

“California is obligated to determine if Trump is ineligible for the California ballot for the same reasons described in Anderson…The Colorado decision can be the basis for a similar decision here in our state. The constitution is clear: you must be 40 years old and not be an insurrectionist.”

For the record, the Constitutional age requirement to be president is 35, not 40.  And If 35 looks like 40 to you, it’s time for LensCrafters.

Saving democracy is tough work.  And, if Democrats get their way, it involves making sure that voters have absolutely no say in who runs the government.

It kind of reminds me of that (probably apocryphal) Vietnam quote, “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”

That’s how the Democrats feel about democracy.

John Phillips can be heard weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. on “The John Phillips Show” on KABC/AM 790.