By Chris Powell
Despite President Biden’s disastrous performance in last week’s debate with Donald Trump, Connecticut journalists could not find one leading Democrat in the state ready to ask the president to drop his campaign for re-election and let the party nominate someone presentable.
Some of those leading Connecticut Democrats say democracy will be in jeopardy if demon Trump wins, but do they really believe it is or care if it is? After all, Trump has a chance only because of the horrible record of the Biden administration and the glaring senility of the president himself. If the Democrats nominated a moderate and articulate candidate who took different policy positions, Trump’s chances would diminish.
But those leading Connecticut Democrats may figure that they have nothing at stake personally in the Biden debacle — may figure that Connecticut is so Democratic that Biden will carry the state even if he is comatose. Democrats in competitive states may be more concerned for the country as well as their own careers.
Challenging a president or governor of one’s own party takes great courage even when the incumbent’s record is as terrible as Biden’s. The chief executive may retaliate ruthlessly against those in his party who cross him.
But such a challenge can be successful. A challenge by U.S. Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy to the Democrats’ renomination of President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968 amid the disaster of the Vietnam war garnered so much support from ordinary Democrats in states with primaries that Johnson was induced to withdraw.
Even the war’s supporters in Congress and Johnson himself knew the war was a disaster — probably unwinnable, not worth winning, and not being fought to be won. But fearful of the president, most Democrats in Congress stayed silent. It was left to McCarthy and ordinary Democrats to show that the emperor had no clothes. Their party’s leadership was cowardly and corrupt.
Back then no one with any standing in Connecticut’s Democratic Party supported McCarthy while Johnson remained a candidate. Protecting their standing was more important to them than protecting the country. But at least back then Johnson’s supporters didn’t claim that democracy itself was at stake.
To the contrary, back then establishment Democrats strove to prevent democracy — to prevent primary elections.
Now the position of Connecticut’s leading Democrats is, in effect, that democracy is at risk, in large part because their presidential candidate is senile, but they can’t put themselves at risk to do something about it.
This is a good time for Connecticut voters to reconsider their one-party state and chasten those in charge for their arrogance.
In any case Democrats frightened by general recognition of Biden’s mental decline seem to have forgotten that he is even more unpopular because of his administration’s record. A substitute Democratic nominee would not deserve election even against Trump if he ran on open borders and massive illegal and unvetted immigration; provoking Russia with a proxy war on its border; protecting Hamas; grossly inflationary federal spending; wokeness and transgenderism; assaults on free speech; and politicization of criminal justice.
In the long term those policies are more objectionable than Biden’s senility. Too bad for Connecticut that few Republicans here are challenging these policies and will have the campaign money necessary to do so, and that most of the state’s journalists think Biden’s policies are great.
MORE SCHOOLS CRASH: Add Stamford to the list of Connecticut cities whose schools are getting out of control.
Teachers at Stamford’s Turn of River Middle School say they are being abused, bullied, threatened, and even assaulted by students, and that the school administration has failed to report the assaults to the police.
The administration says it will add a third security officer to the school. That officer is needed not to protect the school against outsiders but against its own students, since under Connecticut law even the most disruptive students are almost impossible to expel, lest their feelings be hurt and the public catch sight of social disintegration.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
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Chris Powell column 