Biden aide to Politico: We’re all finding out by tweet. None of us understand what’s happening

Michael Shellenberger - Joe Biden has just announced he’s not running for re-election and will support Vice President Kamala Harris’s candidacy instead. The announcement came as a shock to the people who work at the White House and to campaign aides, one of whom told Politico, "We’re all finding out by tweet. None of us understand what’s happening.” The same was true in Delaware, Biden’s home state. “I don’t think a soul in Delaware knew,” said a Biden campaign official.

As such, this is the third time in three presidential elections that Democratic Party elites have subverted democracy to choose a presidential candidate.

The first time this occurred was in 2016 when the Democratic National Committee manipulated money and process to help Hillary Clinton defeat Bernie Sanders. The second time was in 2020, when Party elites pushed out Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar so Elizabeth Warren could split the progressive vote with Sanders, creating a path to victory for Biden.

This year, Biden and the DNC prevented a competitive open primary, and now Biden is deciding who will be the nominee for Democrats. Harris was deeply unpopular with Democratic voters when she ran in the 2020 primary, leading her to drop out after her polling plummeted to the single digits.

It’s true that the Democratic elites followed the formal rules, most Democrats agreed that Biden should not run again, and a Democrat could still challenge Kamala Harris at the convention.

But the party undermined the spirit of democracy in every election. Democracy, at its core, is about letting the people decide for themselves. That simply didn’t happen.

In fact, a very small number of Democratic Party donors and media elites chose Hillary Clinton, Biden, and Harris. In many ways it was the media who influenced donors and decided Biden should go after his disastrous debate performance.

To the extent that ordinary Democratic Party voters turned against Biden it was in response to the media turning on him. When the media insisted that Biden was fine, and that the worries about his health were just right-wing propaganda, Democratic voters were loyal to him.

While it’s true someone could challenge Harris for the nomination, it’s very hard to see that happening, given Biden’s endorsement and the argument from Kamala Harris supporters that it would be borderline racist for anyone else to win the nomination. Within a few hours, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Senator Tammy Baldwin, and Democratic mega-donor Reid Hoffman all endorsed Harris. Other Party elites will likely do the same.

Over the last three weeks, Biden fought Democratic donors, media elites, and Party leaders. He insisted repeatedly he could do the job. But, in the end, they overwhelmed him. They withheld funding. They attacked almost every day, letting up for just 24 hours after the near-assassination of former President Trump.

As a result, nobody could watch the events of the last few weeks and believe that the Democratic Party is democratic. It is a party controlled by the media, donors, and the deep state.

However one feels about the GOP, the same can’t be said of Republicans. Republican voters rejected their own party leaders, donors, and the foreign policy establishment to nominate Trump for president in 2016. Democrats, by contrast, sided with the establishment candidate in choosing Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020.

Why is that? Why did Democrats become the party controlled by elites and obedient to authority, and Republicans the party of rebellion and, increasingly, the working class?