To the editor,
As I write this, the Democratic Party primary process is over. It never began. Kamala Harris has begun campaigning. She is already considering a VP running mate. This despite the fact that former President Obama has asked for an open and competitive convention. And former New York mayor Bloomberg has advised to take our time, and do “it” right.
Numbers of columnists and Democratic politicians have sought to censor debate on Harris’s qualifications by accusing critics of a MAGA racism and misogyny against the first black female candidate for president. In democratic contemporary America, this has been a proven and effective method of suppressing open debate in the pages of newspapers, church basement discussions, and college campuses. No need for arrests, the breaking up of demonstrations, senior editors censoring journalists.
I’d like to offer a few facts and reasons which those who specialize in canceling debate would rather we the voters not read. I invite anyone reading this to fact check my list.
Harris had a 38.3% approval rating as of July 22nd, 2024.
While other Democrats in California won their elections by 10 percentage points, Harris won hers by less than 1%.
The Washington Post reported in 2021, December, that Harris had seen numbers of her staff quit due to her poor management. She has had a high turnover of staff as the VP. Staff complained that Harris refused to read briefings they had prepared, then berated them when she appeared unprepared. This is ominous coming from someone who may be the next president.
Democratic pundits have been criticizing Harris as a failure at the office of VP. Their criticism stopped appearing in newspapers once it became obvious Harris would ascend to the top of the Democratic ticket. Sources for this observation have been the New York Times, Guardian, the online political commentary, Persuasion.
Harris failed her first attempt to pass the bar exam while 72% of her peers passed. Yet she then went on to become a DA and later attorney general of California.
Harris narrated a video endorsing equity over equality – a controversial issue. Kimberly Cheatle resigned as chief of the secret service because her negligence and lack of competence cost a fireman his life and nearly cost the Republican presidential candidate his. The inability to do a job costs lives.
The American people – all of us, not just residents of coastal urban areas – deserve the most qualified individual to occupy the office of president. The way our democratic process has been working: someone goes through a grueling primary season, debates other candidates, wins the most delegates and hopefully has given us a chance to decide if he or she is the most qualified for the office. In the America of 2024, this has not occurred in the Democratic Party. Democracy is suffering for it.
My liberal, Democratic peers have been repeating how Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy. Yet these same Democrats remained silent at the way White House advisers kept from the American people Biden’s cognitive decline just long enough for the presidential primaries to be over. Then allowed Democratic Party elites from Pelosi to Hollywood celebrities to California wealthy donors to pressure Biden to quit and without missing a beat foisting a deeply unpopular vice-president whose competency is an open question upon America. Without firing one bullet, these elites have disenfranchised Americans from the heartland to the Plains, the mountain states to the Gulf. And not a murmur of protest that, perhaps, this constitutes an equal if not greater threat to our Democracy.
Forest A. Ormes
Ellinwood
