To the editor:
In an era of increasingly politically divided news coverage, many Democrats only get their news from MSNBC, CNN, and NPR. I purposely avail myself of YouTube channels on the right and left to get a mixed view. Accordingly, I was well familiar with lengthy montages of Biden making one gaffe after another.
For several years now, the vociferousness I was confronted with when I stated that Biden is in obvious mental decline was epic. The phenomena has even been recent, with stories about “bad-faith” “deep-fake” videos being echoed by dupes who want to believe anything. Joe Scarborough called such statements that videos showing Biden was not mentally competent “all lies.” In fact, they literally expressed concerns that “fact checkers” could not keep up with the “lies” that Biden was a legitimate 25th Amendment concern. Comically, MSNBC actually included in one piece a concern that people would get news from other “unreliable” sources claiming that Biden was not mentally fit for office.
Truth is, one would have to have been fantastically naïve to have been surprised by Biden’s debate performance. To be sure, I wasn’t completely sure Biden would blow it—he did okay in this year’s State of the Union address—but boy was it possible for him to blow it. And then he totally blew it.
I say this as a state-convention-going Democrat: We really blew it. The first mistake was not putting enough pressure on Biden to step down after one term, as he suggested he would when he first ran. The second was rigging the primaries so the signature requirements were not through the roof and opponents could make the ballot. The Florida Democratic primary was literally not even conducted.
I have heard of candidates being elected to office and then serving as mayor in jail (James Michael Curley). I have heard of presidential candidates dropping out before the Democratic primaries such as Lyndon Johnson. Wikipedia has an entire article on “politicians elected posthumously.” However, I have never heard of a candidate having already won a primary and stepping down to be replaced—I have not researched it, and I have misgivings about its legality. Moreover, I believe that if a party runs such a questionable candidate and he or she wins their primary, they should be stuck with that candidate. Otherwise, when the victorious candidate drops out, the whole primary system becomes meaningless.
The government is not obligated to have primaries, and a political party is not obligated to use one. In most of our nation’s history, party candidates were selected at nomination conventions. But if the government provides primaries and parties elect to use them, they ought to be binding. Otherwise the public is not really voting for a candidate, but rather only making a suggestion for a nomination convention.
Rinaldo Del Gallo III
Pittsfield
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