The absense of democracy in the Democratic Party

The fundamental theme of the Democratic Party throughout the now concluded primary electoral season was that the former president Donald J. Trump and the Republican Party under his leadership, presented a great danger to our freedoms and the democratic process. Therefore, Trump had to be defeated in the 2024 presidential election in order for our Republic to survive as a democracy.

According to the Democratic Party’s electoral playbook only Joe Biden, and now Kamala Harris and the Democrats could save the nation from this alleged potential disaster of a Trump victory in November.

There is no dispute that Trump has made several implicit and explicit statements and remarks that could raise questions that would lead to the conclusion that Trump, given the opportunity, intended to govern in an autocratic manner; and the American public should be wary of any politician or political party that would show these tendencies or put them into practice if they could.

Now there has never been a shortage of hypocrisy or an abundance of candor in American politics. This political season has been true to form “in spades.”

When combined with a plague of misinformation, fake news and media bias, along with a primary system that is itself anti-democratic by shutting out half the American electorate in candidate selection, we already have an assault on our democratic values by both parties.

The obvious cover-up by the White House bureaucracy, with the total knowledge and assent of Vice President Harris, of the president’s cognitive challenges for many months prior to his deplorable debate performance, that finally revealed to the American public his total incompetency to lead, was just the first step in the Democratic Party’s desperate and undemocratic attempt to cling to power.

When the president was forced to withdraw from the race, the main assault on democracy by the Democrats was to manipulate the substitution of the vice-president as the presumed nominee in his place by a small number of unelected Democratic power brokers, who were behind the scenes making presidential decisions in the president’s mental absence.

The rational for “anointing” Kamala Harris was that the delegates who were elected in the primaries were not only voting for Biden but were also voting for Harris. Nothing could be further from the truth. They were Biden delegates and only Biden delegates.

The presidential nominee has the exclusive right to choose his or her running mate. Delegate voting in the primaries is exclusively for the presidential nominee. Had Joe Biden continued in the race he could have chosen any one else as his running mate, as Harris did once she was given the presidential nomination.

If the Democrats who presented themselves as the saviors of our democracy, and truly believed their own rhetoric, they would have made the decision to have an open convention, where many of the more talented and more experienced democratic candidates could have appeared before the convention, and after a vigorous debate and floor campaign, taken a democratic vote to select the nominee.

However, discarding their own rhetoric about saving democracy, they chose to have a zoom vote prior to the convention where no other candidate other than Harris was allowed to have his or her name placed in nomination. I am not sure there was even a second to Harris’s nomination. The convention will formally crown Harris the nominee without debate or opposition, a voting procedure even the Kremlin would be proud of.

So, our nation is presented with a Hobson’s choice of nominees, with whom according to polls, an overwhelming majority of Americans are dissatisfied. Whoever prevails in the election, the election will not be rigged, just unrepresentative of the American people’s wishes.

Unfortunately, for our country, the Democratic Party has joined the Republican Party in endangering our democracy, has disregarded the democratic values which the American people hold dear, and have done nothing in this election cycle to bring our nation together.

If you wish to comment or respond you can reach me at melpearlman322@gmail.com. Please do so in a rational, thoughtful, respectful and civil manner.

Mel Pearlman holds B.S. & M.S. degrees in physics as well as a J.D. degree and initially came to Florida in 1966 to work on the Gemini and Apollo space programs. He has practiced law in Central Florida since 1972. He has served as president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando; was a charter board member, first vice president and pro-bono legal counsel of the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Central Florida, as well as holding many other community leadership positions.