A federal judge accepts the Democratic Party’s request not to include other candidates in the ballot that should have taken place on March 19 in Florida, leaving only Biden’s name on the ballot. After canceling the Caucuses in Iowa (replaced by three months of voting by mail) and after invalidating future primaries in New Hampshire, the Democratic Party decides that the primaries in Florida are also useless.
THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY DECIDED IN OCTOBER THAT THE FLORIDA PRIMARY WILL NOT TAKE PLACE
For Florida, the Dems will not have any votes for the primaries preceding the presidential elections in November: already in October 2023, the Party decided that Biden would have the 250 delegates of this state, without any runoff. The decision was obviously contested by the other Democratic candidates, Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson, but the President of the Party in Florida, Nikki Fried, decided that Joe Biden would be the only candidate in the Party primaries because so established by its Executive Committee; for electoral law, with only one candidate, the run-off is superfluous and the winner is the only candidate present, i.e. the current President. This decision, not very “democratic” for a party that defines itself as such, was brought to court by Tampa lawyer Michael Steinberg, former president of the Hillsborough County Democratic Party, who did not like a decision that did not had involved the party base.
A FEDERAL JUDGE ACCEPTS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY’S REQUESTS
The legal challenge to the Florida Democratic Party’s (FDP) decision to list only President Joe Biden’s name on the party’s presidential primary ballot in Florida has gone to federal court. Tallahasse District Court Judge Allen Winsor had a hearing Jan. 10 on whether to issue a preliminary injunction to require Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd to place other candidates in the running for the nomination Democrat for president in Florida’s March 19 Democratic presidential primary runoff. The Judge’s final decision ruled in favor of the Democratic Party and, practically, gives Biden the 250 delegates from Florida. Steinberg defines the decision to exclude the other candidates from the ballot as “an arbitrary decision”, while the Florida Democratic Party claims to have followed procedures and recalls that, when the State Executive Committee met at the end of October to vote on who would have appeared on the ballot paper, the only candidate to receive votes from the members of the Committee itself was Joe Biden.
DEAN PHILLIPS AND MARIANNE WILLIAMSON CRITICIZE THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
Minnesota lawmaker Dean Phillips reacts to the ruling with bitterness and criticizes the Democratic National Committee (DNC) for not following “standard procedures,” saying: “Ms. Williamson was included on the 2020 ballot, even though her support in national and Florida-specific polls she never exceeded 1 percent in the Democratic primary field; in contrast, Ms. Williamson’s support in national polls for the 2024 primaries tended to hover between 4 and 8 percent. It is obvious to any impartial observer that the FDP does not apply the same guidelines for selecting candidates in the primaries in 2024 as it did in 2020. If there is a ‘standard process’, it was not followed.” Marianne Williamson herself, a well-known author and longtime liberal politician, is very critical of the FDP and the DNC in an interview on WMNF Radio in Tampa and says, “They’re not telling you the truth when they tell you that these rules they were well known to everyone, and they were on the website and everyone knew it. This is simply false.” She added: “The traditional role of any political party is to remain in the background until the voters have expressed their opinion. It is the voters who should make these decisions. The voters. Not the party.” Williamson announced her candidacy in February 2023, 8 months before Fried decided with his Executive Committee to exclude her from the competition against Biden.
BUT IS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY REALLY “DEMOCRATIC”?
In the past, the “Democratic” Party has already used the famous “superdelegates” to impose decisions not appreciated by the delegates, those legitimized by the vote in primary elections; but now the case of Florida even makes it impossible for candidates to appear in the run-offs. All polls present unsatisfactory results for Biden’s candidacy for these presidential elections and this could explain why the Democratic Party is trying to eliminate every opponent, both within the Democratic Party and outside of it.
