Anti-Democratic Skullduggery Against West, Stein From the Democratic Party
Kamala Harris, who did not receive a single vote for president during the primaries, accepted the nomination of the Democratic Party Thursday night. Some people do not get their own irony.
In order to catapult the one general election candidate lacking primary votes into the White House, Democrats further follow this logic by disenfranchising members of other parties — as they disenfranchised the 14.5 million Joe Biden voters in their own primaries — through blocking rival candidates from ballot access.
Since Hillary Clinton’s snatching-defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory loss in 2016, Democrats rely on excluding legitimate candidates on the grounds that they should hold a monopoly on ballot spots for left-of-center parties. When this happens in Russia or Venezuela, Americans call it by a name. In America, none dare call it rigging.
In Wisconsin, where Jill Stein’s 31,000 votes in 2016 eclipsed Donald Trump’s 23,000-vote margin of victory, Democrats seek to block the Green Party from the presidential ballot as they did in 2020. The party’s shrewd selection of a Palestinian–American academic in Butch Ware as Stein’s running mate also scares Democrats in that it gives disaffected progressives an outlet of political expression.
David Strange, a Democratic National Committee employee, filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the decision of the Wisconsin Election Commission to allow the Green Party a ballot slot based on their exceeding a legal benchmark of 1 percent in a previous election, as the far-left outfit’s secretary of state candidate received 1.6 percent of the vote in 2022.
The unfortunately named Mr. Strange’s argument holds that the Green Party lacks proper presidential electors. He says state law demands that they consist of elected state legislators and officeholders former and current, and since they boast no such people, they cannot nominate a presidential candidate. Precedent contradicts his argument. In 2000, 2004, 2012, and 2016, the Green Party placed a presidential nominee on November ballots in Wisconsin.
What changed? The Democrats lost a close race in 2016 that they blamed on the Greens rather than themselves. The lesson Democrats drew from Wisconsin was not that they should abandon far-left policies offensive to Midwesterners but that they should kick off the ballot any they see as an impediment to Democrats receiving votes they hubristically imagine as belonging to them.
In Pennsylvania, Democrats knocked off Cornel West from ballots. Yes, the party that spent much of the last four years rambling about the resurrection of Jim Crow sends its lawyers about the country to deny a black man a place on the ballot. They try to do just this in Arizona, Wisconsin, and any other place where the election appears competitive. In Michigan, the secretary of state cited paperwork issues involving the notarization of West’s signatures, which included the failure “to identify what notarial act was being performed,” the lack of “title of office” for the notary, and that the “notary public’s stamp was on a separate sheet of paper and not included with the notary public’s certificate.” It strikes as Kafkaesque.
MSNBC’s Ja’han Jones rationalizes the mistreatment of the longtime left-wing darling by strangely characterizing West’s as a “MAGA-fueled campaign,” more bizarrely describing the group that nominated him as “the far-right-friendly People’s Party,” and citing West’s “curious ties to the conservative movement” and “right-wing conspiracy theorist Russell Brand.”
No amount of ideological alchemy can turn Cornel West, a high-profile personification of progressivism for many decades, into Pat Buchanan, which, if successful, would presumably justify censoring his name in the voting booth in the minds of currently conflicted progressives.
The anti-democratic strategy does not come without risks. The bitterness engendered by the skullduggery unleashed on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may result in the scion of the family most associated with the Democratic Party endorsing the Republican.
“I have to say there’s only one party that has obstructed a fair election for us, and unfortunately it was the Democratic Party,” Nicole Shanahan, RFK, Jr.’s running mate, told Fox News. “They’ve done everything they can, including creating PACs to prevent us from being able to have ballot access.”
It started with a post-presidency impeachment, which the Left reasoned would disqualify Donald Trump from running for office. Secretaries of state in Maine and Colorado then ordered the removal of Donald Trump’s name from the ballot. Banana republic–style lawsuits and indictments wielded against the opposition candidate followed. It continued with party bigwigs overruling the 14.5 million primary voters who chose Joe Biden as their presidential nominee. And it goes on with attempts to clear ballots of any candidates who passed the legal requirements for placing their names on ballots but represent a hinderance to Democrats holding onto power.
Leave aside whether this is your father’s or grandfather’s Democratic Party. The Democratic Party isn’t a democratic party.
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