Yesterday, President Biden made the call to bow out of the Presidential race in a display of patriotism that should be standard for all of our leaders and is, sadly, not so common anymore. The President put the country before personal ambition and stepped aside from what seemed to be a doomed run for a second term, allowing the American people a real choice for their leadership.
While we applaud that action from Biden, the circumstances that got us here are firmly caused by the degradation of democracy at the hands of the legacy parties. Forward is currently focused on the rest of the more than 500,000 elected offices in the United States, but the Presidency is the single most influential seat in the nation. The process to choose a President must be one in which we, the people, have the ultimate say.
But this year, the Democratic party chose power over democracy. The “primary” they held this spring was a sham – a primary in name only. Other candidates were forced out, some states disallowed challengers to Biden’s nomination to even appear on the ballot, and every deck was stacked in favor of the sitting President to protect him from a long and strenuous campaign. This effort to coronate instead of nominate robbed the American people of the right to truly choose their leader.
Now, it looks like that’s going to happen again. The Democratic Party machine has united behind Vice President Harris, Biden’s chosen successor. But have the people been given a voice? Have we been asked who we want to run? Or, once again, are party elites handing us a candidate that voters didn’t get to voice their opinions on?
Politics shouldn’t be a strongarm game. It shouldn’t be a constant draining choice between the lesser of two evils. Politics should be open to all – a place where every idea is heard and measured and only the best truly win out. We should welcome competition for all the honed clarity it brings to our decisions on how to forge the path ahead.
It’s time for more choices. It’s time for better primaries. It’s time for voters to have a real voice. It’s time to move Forward.
