Democracy Means Rule by Democrats

By Lucija @Adobe Stock

A Melancholy Farce

Joe’s out; Kamala’s in. Overnight, writes Kimberley Strassel in the WSJ, Democrats and the media have united to return all their focus to Donald Trump.

You might think the past weeks of panicked handwringing over Joe Biden’s age and record, plummeting polls, and lack of ideal replacements never happened.

Pay attention, here, admonishes Roger Kimball in Spectator US:

What just happened is essentially an anti-democratic coup. Kamala Harris, who got no delegates — zero — when she ran for president in 2020 and was only chosen as Biden’s running mate because he had promised to pick a black woman.

Kamala Harris is about to be handed the Democratic nomination for president of the United States:

Fourteen million people voted for Biden in the primaries. What about their votes? Don’t be naive. The voters don’t matter except as a matter of packaging. What matters is what the mostly unnamed Council of Elders wants. They wanted Biden when he was a useful proxy. When he ceased being useful, he was cashiered. Just today it was announced that those transcripts Special Counsel Robert Hur made of his conversation with Biden — the ones that prompted him to say that Biden was an elderly man with a poor memory who was not fit to stand trial — suddenly the DoJ found them and is about to release them. Expect a lot more where that came from.

The Nauseating Trope: Our Democracy

But the real takeaway from this melancholy farce is that the Dems do not care a whit about democracy, continues Mr. Kimball.

They believe, as I have often observed, that “democracy” means “rule by Democrats.” In 2020 they managed the balancing act whereby they shouted “our democracy” while actually working to destroy it. They are hoping it will work again this time.

The phoenix-like return of Donald Trump, together with the malevolent preposterousness of Kamala Harris, makes that exceedingly unlikely. And that, it may almost go without saying, is as reassuring a thing for genuine democracy as it is devastating for the fraud that goes under the nauseating title of “Our Democracy.”

Elected Democrats did their best to ignore the progressive mob’s “day of rage.” Many, including Ms. Harris, skipped Mr. Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress, reports Ms. Strassel. (Ms. Harris did issue a statement the next day denouncing “despicable acts by unpatriotic protestors.”)

The Left’s Squeaky Wheels

But the far left won’t be denied. It’s already working to mold the Harris campaign into the pure progressivism it felt it was denied in 2020. Witness the campaign to blackball any perceived “moderate” or “centrist” vice presidential pick from the Harris ticket.

The left is blacklisting one potential VP pick for Harris, PA’s Governor Josh Shapiro, because he’s “egregiously bad on Palestine” and a “supporter of Israel.”

Shapiro’s censure of an illegal college occupation calls into question his belief in the “First Amendment” and “academic freedom.”

The Art of Exerting Leverage

One notable endorsement holdout is Bernie Sanders, continues Ms. Strassel:

Many of his progressive brethren are already publicly vowing to withhold support for Ms. Harris unless she readopts (to name a few demands):

• Medicare for all
• A total ban on fracking
• Open borders
• National rent control

A Jacobin piece exhorts her to name Mr. Sanders as her running mate, so as to “pivot”—not to the center, but to the left. “Swapping the name and face of a campaign isn’t enough to win voters back,” warns another New Republic piece.