The American left is frustrating sometimes, and nothing shows this more than the call for President Joe Biden to step down as president and allow another to run. A lot of people who should really know better are pushing this ridiculous idea.
It is blatantly undemocratic. Joe Biden emerged as the victor in the Democratic primary in 2020 from an enormously diverse panel. Everyone from tech bros to senators to a lady that talks to crystals got their fair shot, and Biden easily trounced them all.
Millions of voters selected Biden to run, fully aware of his age, his stutter, and his, well, Joe Bidenness. Black voters especially lined up behind him because they knew white voters better than we know ourselves. Biden says he ran because he thought he was the only person who could beat Trump, and there is no compelling evidence to dispute that.
No sensible person should have cast that primary or general election vote thinking Biden wouldn’t run for re-election if Trump decided to as well. Even so, there was a 2024 Democratic primary, and Biden walked away with it despite barely trying. Sure, 700,000 voted non-committed as a protest, but it was still a tiny fraction of the overall vote. Biden has now twice been chosen by the people to front the Democratic Party.
The United States is currently fighting for the very soul of democracy. People are still being prosecuted for an attempted violent coup against election certification in 2021. Biden’s opponent, Donald Trump, is indicted for interfering with Georgia elections. There have been numerous attempts to thwart the democratic process in the country since it became clear Trump was not going to be re-elected in 2020.
The idea that Biden would look at all the voters that chose him and decide to invalidate their voices is more than stupid; it is the latest blow to American democracy. Both the right and the left in this country have an unnerving penchant for wanting elected kings, as if the whole nation was one big collection of people who didn’t get enough hugs from daddy. Frustration with the political process, while completely understandable, has become a yearning to be controlled that is antithetical to American ideals. I can hardly think of a worse idea than Joe Biden, who has spent the last four years supporting the continuation of democracy, telling voters they were wrong because a few moderate white elites think he’s a bad choice. Support for the parties is already low. Do we really want to return to a time when the candidate was decided in a smoke-filled room rather than at the ballot box? Can anyone tell me with a straight face that we, the voters, should have less say in this process?
I cannot imagine Biden at the Democratic National Convention standing up to address the nation and essentially telling them their votes were meaningless. Instead, here’s a random person you didn’t want to be president that’s going to get the shot no matter what you said or did.
And don’t bring up Kamala Harris as the savior here. Fond as I am of the vice president (I voted for her in the 2024 primary), she also lost in 2020. It wasn’t even close. As Biden’s veep, she has the most claim to continuing the ideas of democratic selection, but she still wasn’t the one voters chose. She could have tried to primary her boss this year, but she didn’t.
The time for Biden to step aside was before the primary or maybe in the early days of it. That would have given voters a chance to make their desires known. This didn’t happen. America cannot afford for a president to further disregard the will of voters during elections. Doing so only makes his opponent, a blatant anti-democracy candidate, seem just as good a choice.
