President Biden’s comment last Sunday about his lack of confidence that there would be a peaceful transfer of power should former President Donald Trump lose in November, got us to take a fresh look at the Democratic mantra that Trump is a threat to our democracy. In fact, there does appear to be a threat, but it does not come from Donald Trump. It comes from those sufferers of Trump Derangement Syndrome who are driving the Democratic Party to, shall we say, decidedly undemocratic places.
In his first interview since announcing he was dropping out of the 2024 presidential race, Biden told CBS why he did so. He said his primary goal now as it has always been, is to ensure a Trump loss: “Although I, it was a great honor being president, I think I have an obligation to the country to do what I, the most important thing you could do, and that is we must, we must, we must defeat Trump.” [Syntax and grammar his.]
He went on to explain that although polls showed his race with Trump to be tight, his performance in the June debate caused panic among some Democrats that he could not win the general election and also threatened the chances of Congressional Democrats further down the ticket. Leading voices of the Democratic Party then successfully pressured him to abandon his reelection race, leading him to bow out in order to avoid the inevitable infighting which would have been a “real distraction” from – and perhaps jeopardize – the goal of defeating Trump. He maintained, however, that he was up to the race and could have defeated Trump.
But the key point to be made is that the Democratic machers were concerned with Biden’s ability to defeat Trump not whether he was up to the rigors of a presidential campaign or serving as president. Indeed, there was no apparent effort to get Biden to resign the presidency over a lack of capacity to serve. So, they arbitrarily dumped Biden – who had already accumulated commitments from almost all of the Democratic delegates to the upcoming 2024 Democratic convention with someone who had gotten 0 votes in the 2020 primaries when she ran against Biden, and of course now, when she didn’t mount a primary challenge to Biden.
It bears repeating: a small group of political operators arbitrarily chose someone who had never gotten even one vote in support of her being president from Democrats over someone who was twice the overwhelming choice of Democratic presidential primary voters. And it was all a matter of their imposing their judgment as to his chances of winning over his.
Sounds a little sordid to us and smacks of what would ordinarily be viewed in other countries as a coup.
But there is more.
It seems that there is a movement afoot by some leading congressional Democrats, headed by Reps. Jamie Raskin and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, to hedge the party’s bets in November.
What they appear to have in mind is using Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to prevent Donald Trump from taking office if he is successful in the November presidential election. That provision bars anyone who “engaged in insurrection” from holding federal office.
They argue that this applies to Donald Trump over his supposed role in the Jan. 6, 2021 riots in the Capital. It should be noted that Trump has never been criminally charged with insurrection in any court and his impeachment over the issue in the House failed to draw a conviction in the Senate.
Trouble though is that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in March that only Congress can enforce that provision, not individual states and not law enforcement. Hence the effort by sufferers of Trump Derangement Syndrome to pass a law authorizing such an effort.
To be sure, bringing a legitimate legal case against Trump under the 14th Amendment would likely be insurmountable even for Congress, unless a political “fix” was in. The language of the Amendment in toto and the facts of his actions just don’t support it. And the Supreme Court’s ruling itself set significantly more roadblocks to bringing such a case against former President Donald Trump than setting limits as to who can bring it.
But Democrats seem to be open to anything that will keep Donald Trump out of the White House regardless of what the voters say.
So where do the threats to democracy really lie?
