Credibility of democratic processes in the US is being undermined.
As the long and gruelling presidential election season in the US forges ahead, one person sitting pretty and unperturbed is none other than President Joe Biden, the incumbent belonging to the Democrat Party. But that’s not because President Biden is the most popular candidate in the field and, hence, all but assured of his victory. Far from being popular, Mr Biden is one of the most unpopular incumbent presidential candidates in recent history, with his approval ratings hovering in the high 30s. He is sitting pretty because the Democrats are outmanoeuvring Mr Biden’s opponents in political gamesmanship.
BIG TECH, MEDIA, AND 51 INTELLIGENCE OFFICERS
In a hotly contested 2020 presidential election, candidate Biden outperformed the incumbent President Donald Trump. But that victory wasn’t without controversy. There were allegations of direct interference through censorship, misinformation, and propaganda from America’s intelligence community, tech industry, and America’s media houses.
Just weeks before the 2020 presidential elections, the New York Post published a report about an abandoned laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son. Fifty-one intelligence officials came to the rescue of Mr Biden and the Democrats when they falsely claimed, without evidence, that the information discovered in Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation.
Intense censorship by Silicon Valley Big Tech saw America’s oldest daily newspaper, the New York Post, locked out of its account on Twitter, now X. The Post was not allowed to share news from its handle for weeks. No other Twitter handle was allowed to share the Hunter Biden laptop news. The American corporate media—TV channels and newspapers—refused to cover this news. Studies suggest that this censorship potentially changed the outcome of the US presidential election.
WEAPONIZING THE STATE MACHINERY
During the 2024 presidential election cycle, we have witnessed a gross misuse of state power by the Biden administration and its allies to go after their political rivals, including former President Donald Trump. Democrats have filed frivolous civil and criminal charges against Mr Trump in various states and cities where they are in power.
There are concerted efforts to keep Mr Trump off primary ballots. He has already been banned in Colorado and Maine, pending appeals in the relevant court system. Banning Mr Trump from Colorado and Maine primary ballots, according to the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, “shows how Democrats are determined to make 2024 an election decided by lawyers and courts, not by voters.” Republicans have called such gross misuse of power a “weaponization” of the federal government that, according to the Republican Florida Governor and Mr Trump’s Republican primary rival, Ron DeSantis, “represents a moral threat to a free society.”
“Given the efforts among Biden fans to keep his potential Republican rival off ballots—and the Biden Justice Department’s prosecutions of said rival,” writes James Freeman, a Wall Street Journal columnist, “one wonders if there’s any open democratic contest in which Joe Biden is willing to compete.”
PRIMARIES AND CAUCUSES
Despite being a “Washington insider”—he has spent most of his adult life in politics in Washington, DC—many consider Mr Biden an uncharismatic leader. He ran his 2020 presidential campaign mostly sitting in his house looking out of his basement. He was considered a “big mouth” senator and a “foot in his mouth” Vice President for former President Barack Obama. Brazen fabrications, exaggeration, and lies about his life events, achievements, etc., are closely identified with Mr Biden’s personality.
Mr Biden had to drop out of the race when he ran for the White House 36 years ago. According to Freeman, Mr Biden had to quit “when voters realized he would say just about anything to get elected.” Today, Freeman writes, “Mr Biden and his allies seem willing to do just about anything to prevent competition for the Democratic nomination.”
That brings us to the primaries. In the US, election primaries are the process of selecting party candidates for the general elections, including the party’s gubernatorial and presidential nomination. The caucus is a system where faithful party members gather in small community groups. After speeches from the delegates and party surrogates, the gathering votes.
For about half a century, since the 1970s, this long primary season has started in the state of Iowa, a midwestern farming community of just over 3 million people. However, the Democrats have chosen to skip the caucuses in Iowa altogether. They have opted for a mail-in ballot, results for which will be announced in March. The Democrats’ 2020 presidential primary caucus in Iowa was an embarrassment due to mismanagement. It failed to produce a clear winner, and Mr Biden, the eventual nominee, came in fourth there.
KEEP THEM OUT
But President Biden and his allies in the Democrat Party are wary of exposing Mr Bided to competition and debates because of his physical and mental state. There have been no Democrat primary debates, and to protect Mr Biden, the Democrats have, so far, manoeuvred to eliminate primaries in Florida and North Carolina. In all fairness, it must also be pointed out that Mr Trump, President Biden’s presumptive rival in the main election, has avoided all Republican primary debates.
In Florida, the state’s Democrat Party officials, according to reports, “submitted only President Joe Biden’s name as a candidate up for nomination.” Similarly, in North Carolina, Mr Biden will be the only Democrat candidate. State election officials confirmed that this was done at the “request” of the North Carolina Democrat Party to have Mr Biden “alone on the ballot,” leaving out other challengers—Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips, self-help author Marianne Williamson, and podcaster Cenk Uygur. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., another Democrat and a member of the prestigious Kennedy family, started as a Democrat challenger but later decided to run independently.
Democrats also tinkered with the traditional primary schedule, moving South Carolina up and New Hampshire down the primary calendar. This move will help Mr Biden gain momentum in the primaries from the outset. South Carolina is a “Biden-friendly” state, whereas Mr Biden ran poorly in New Hampshire in the 2020 primaries.
Such manoeuvrings undermine the credibility of the democratic processes in the US and expose it to criticism.
Avatans Kumar is a recipient of the San Francisco Press Club’s Journalism Award.