Control. They want it. Makes them happy and fulfilled.
When Biden and the party could have been held accountable to voters during the primary season, party operatives and their media allies gaslit the public, insisted that everything was fine, and claimed that alarming videos of Biden’s impairment were simply right-wing disinformation. Only now that they have the opportunity to install a new candidate at the convention, such as California Governor Gavin Newsom, are they finally being honest about Biden’s evident cognitive decline. And some Democrats, like Brzezinski, are still absurdly obedient to Biden’s handlers, arguing that a president who can’t reliably string a sentence together is a viable option.
This is not the Democrats’ only authoritarian turn. Since at least 2016, Democrats have undermined democracy by facilitating and supporting the Censorship Industrial Complex. In 2020, the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop, coordinated by party operatives and the intelligence community, may have impacted the election results. What’s more, Democrats overwhelmingly support the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), even as both of these agencies have engaged in profoundly anti-democratic activities.
It wasn’t always this way. From the 1960s until recently, the Democratic Party was the party of anti-authoritarianism. Democrats opposed foreign wars favored by the foreign policy establishment and fought to expose and end abuses of power by the FBI. And as the Times noted, the Democratic Party 50 years ago “rewrote its rules to marginalize the role of political bosses.” Democrats pasted “Question Authority” bumper stickers on their Hondas and Volvos. As recently as 2008, Democrats rejected the establishment candidate Hillary Clinton for the apparent outsider Barack Obama.
But now all this has changed. Republicans 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. And they did so again for 2024, even though nearly half of Democrats say Biden shouldn’t be running.
Why is that? Why did Democrats become an authoritarian party?
When Biden and the party could have been held accountable to voters during the primary season, party operatives and their media allies gaslit the public, insisted that everything was fine, and claimed that alarming videos of Biden’s impairment were simply right-wing disinformation. Only now that they have the opportunity to install a new candidate at the convention, such as California Governor Gavin Newsom, are they finally being honest about Biden’s evident cognitive decline. And some Democrats, like Brzezinski, are still absurdly obedient to Biden’s handlers, arguing that a president who can’t reliably string a sentence together is a viable option.
This is not the Democrats’ only authoritarian turn. Since at least 2016, Democrats have undermined democracy by facilitating and supporting the Censorship Industrial Complex. In 2020, the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop, coordinated by party operatives and the intelligence community, may have impacted the election results. What’s more, Democrats overwhelmingly support the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), even as both of these agencies have engaged in profoundly anti-democratic activities.
It wasn’t always this way. From the 1960s until recently, the Democratic Party was the party of anti-authoritarianism. Democrats opposed foreign wars favored by the foreign policy establishment and fought to expose and end abuses of power by the FBI. And as the Times noted, the Democratic Party 50 years ago “rewrote its rules to marginalize the role of political bosses.” Democrats pasted “Question Authority” bumper stickers on their Hondas and Volvos. As recently as 2008, Democrats rejected the establishment candidate Hillary Clinton for the apparent outsider Barack Obama.
But now all this has changed. Republicans 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. And they did so again for 2024, even though nearly half of Democrats say Biden shouldn’t be running.
Why is that? Why did Democrats become an authoritarian party?
