President Joe Biden is stepping aside as the presumptive Democrat nominee after his party helped ensure he staved off a real primary challenge, effectively disenfranchising voters across the Democrat base.
The effort began in December 2022 when Biden penned a letter to the Democrat National Committee asking for changes to the nominating process, including reordering the primary calendar.
“Our early states must reflect the overall diversity of our party and our nation – economically, geographically, demographically. This means more diverse states earlier in the process and more diversity in the overall mix of early states,” Biden wrote to the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
The DNC moved to grant Biden’s requests a day later, first and foremost making South Carolina the first state to vote in the Democrat nominating process, breaking from the tradition of the Iowa Caucus being first.
Importantly, South Carolina saved what looked to be Biden’s doomed campaign in 2020 after he had awful showings in the Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire primary.
He placed fourth in Iowa before coming in fifth in New Hampshire and a very distant second in the Nevada Caucuses, where he lost to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) by 26 percentage points.
With Sanders steaming into South Carolina, then-House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (R-SC) endorsed Biden, helping him earn 48.6 percent of support and rejuvenating his campaign.
By moving South Carolina to the forefront in 2024 and not recognizing New Hampshire’s delegates after it set its primary before any other states’ due to New Hampshire law — thus breaking with the DNC’s novel calendar — the DNC essentially set up Biden for an easier pathway to the nomination than he had in 2020, with South Carolina, the savior of his campaign, going first.
Independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr., who started his candidacy in the Democrat primary this cycle before leaving the party, slammed the DNC for running a “rigged” primary system during an appearance on Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Sunday in April 2023, the month he launched his campaign. He pointed to the calendar change and lack of debate in the interview.
“The DNC, at this point, has taken the official position that there will be no debate, and I think that’s unfortunate … I think what the DNC did to New Hampshire is also unfortunate,” RFK Jr. told Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Joel Pollak.
“It’s very cheap to campaign in. And it has the largest independent block in the country. And people [don’t] make their minds up until they see the candidates again and again and again, and they shake the candidate’s hands five times before deciding who to vote for,” Kennedy Jr. said of the Granite State.
“They vet these candidates for the whole country, they vet them like you would get vetted if you were running for a city council seat,” he added.
Kennedy opted to pursue an independent candidacy in October, months ahead of the South Carolina primary.
“We declare independence from the cynical elites who betray our hope and who amplify our divisions. And finally, we declare independence from the two political parties,” he said.
After the mainstream media, the party, and his own family cast Kennedy as a pariah, and Biden only faced two other challengers in little-known Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) and self-help guru Marianne Williamson, the 81-year-old president was on a glide path to the nomination.
As far back as May 2023, there were documented concerns about Biden’s mental fitness and his age among Democrats and independents. A Harvard-Harris poll from that month showed about a quarter of Democrat respondents had doubts about Biden’s mental fitness, as did 65 percent of independents and 83 percent of Republicans.
What is more, a third of Democrats said he was “showing he is too old to be president.” More than nine in ten Republicans and seven in ten independents agreed. The poll also found that 67 percent of Democrats said America “needs another choice” when asked if they were okay with Trump and Biden as hypothetical nominees of their respective parties.
Yet, Biden never saw a serious challenger, and by the time he appeared at that fateful June 27 debate that sunk his career and tarnished his legacy, he had won every nominating contest and earned 14 million votes.
Now that each state has spent significant resources to run these contests and the majority of Democrat primary voters chose Biden — except the ones who protested his handling of the Israel-Hamas war with uncommitted votes or backed Phillips or Williamson — Democrats have succeeded in their pressure campaign to boot Biden from the top of the ticket as he imperiled down-ballot races.
Instead of millions of primary voters deciding on the nominee, some 4,600 delegates will do so at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month, effectively disenfranchising those who voted for Biden, those who voted for others, and those who never turned out to the ballot box because there was never a viable challenger to the president.
“They’re all frazzled now because they say that we were a threat to democracy, and yet, hey, they’re trying to find a way to somehow get rid of their democratically nominated presidential candidate, ” Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-FL) told Breitbart News at the Republican National Convention last week.
“So isn’t that something? Who’s really the threat to democracy here?” he added. Giménez now calls on Biden to resign.
“If Joe Biden isn’t capable enough to seek re-election, he’s not capable enough to remain serving as out President,” he said in an emailed release.
Vice President Kamala Harris is consolidating support from Biden and the Clintons, but notably not the Obamas as former President Barack Obama said he supports an open process at the convention.
“We will be navigating uncharted waters in the days ahead. But I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges,” Obama wrote Sunday.
Kennedy Jr. believes the process in Chicago will be rig[ged] to shoo-in Harris as the candidate.
“Many Americans fear that the same DNC elites are about to rig the nominating process again to get a monumentally unpopular vice president to step into President Biden’s shoes,” he wrote in a post on X after saying Biden’s “infirmities were evident to any unbiased observer from the beginning.”
I commend President Biden for stepping down. His infirmities were evident to any unbiased observer from the beginning. It was this progressive deterioration — and his abandonment of Democratic Party principles — that prompted me to enter the race and ensure American voters had a…
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) July 21, 2024
“I call on the Democratic Party to return to its traditional commitment to democracy and exemplify it with an open process,” he added.
Williamson supports an open process as well.
I want to take a moment to express my gratitude and respect to President Biden. He reached what had to have been an extremely difficult decision, but he did what is best for his party and his country. Clearly in his heart he shares the goal of the many millions of Americans who…
— Marianne Williamson (@marwilliamson) July 21, 2024