This post is very close in objective and perspective to this one, but the principle bears emphasizing. There was nothing unconstitutional about President Biden being persuaded, forced, extorted or threatened into taking himself off of the top of the Democratic ticket for the November election. The conservative media persists in saying otherwise, calling it a coup, which is ridiculous, so much so that it undermines the credibility of the pundits making the charge. As I wrote in the post just three days ago,

“That’s politics. Nobody complained that Richard Nixon being persuaded to resign rather than fight through an impeachment was unconstitutional, because it wasn’t. For leaders of the GOP to meet with Nixon and say, “Step down now, for the good of the party, the nation and yourself,” was responsible, and the only course available in a terrible situation. The same was true for Biden.”

The Democrats have engaged in so much hypocritical, dishonest and undemocratic conduct connected to Biden’s debacle of a Presidency, the 2016 Post-Election Ethics Train Wreck, and the Kamala Harris bait-and-switch that it is needlessly confusing to criticize the party for the one thing it did right, although, as usual, as unethically and unimpressively as you can do the right thing. For example, even as they were preparing the trap door under Joe, they were telling their propaganda machine, a.k.a. the mainstream media, that “nobody could make the decision but the President.” That is and was nonsense: if the President is determined to behave irresponsibly, harming the nation, it is the obligation of whomever can stop such reckless conduct to do so. Nothing in the Constitution limits the political or personal pressure that can be used to prevent a President from running for re-election. Yes, it was unethical for the Democrats to refuse to have debates, primaries, and to prevent other candidates from seeking the 2024 nomination. Yes, it was despicably unethical for Democrats to cover-up Joe’s mental decline and to repeatedly lie to the public about it; indeed, it was probably unethical to nominate Biden in the first place, since it should have been obvious that his was a weak mind getting weaker with age.

But twisting his arms to get him to drop out? It was absolutely the right thing to do. Now since then, Democrats being the Soviet-style party they have become, the game plan has switched back to anti-democratic tactics and maneuvers. They selected Harris even though no one has ever voted their preference for her to be President, and even though she may well have lost in an open convention. No Presidential candidate has been chosen in such an undemocratic way since at least 1836, almost 190 years ago.

It continues to be mind-boggling to me that the party that is behaving this way (and claiming to be defending democracy while doing the precise opposite ) is the same gang that for four years kept saying that Trump’s “defiance of the institutions of democracy” proved his secret penchant for dictatorship. This is #6 among the Big Lies of the Resistance, originally inflicted on the political debate by, of course, the New York Times. Even if the contrived “norm defying” claims by the Democrats were fair and accurate (they aren’t), they wouldn’t approach in significance and recklessness the anti-democratic tactics of their own party in the past year alone.

Getting Biden to drop out of the 2024 race, however, wasn’t one of them. Stop attacking the Democratic Party for one of the very few situations it finally got right.