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The Democrats are trying to run on the issue of “democracy,” which polls tell us ranks around fourth in voters’ rating of issues. It has never been clear what Democrats mean by claiming that Our Democracy™️ is on the ballot. Ironically, though, in a very real sense it is.

I have been in Europe for the last couple of weeks. A few days ago, I had a conversation with a young businessman from Amsterdam who happened to be sitting next to us at dinner in a Paris bistro, with his French girlfriend. He expressed dismay that the President of the United States could be an “idiot,” referring to Kamala Harris. That would be terrible, he thought, for the U.S., but also for Europe. He didn’t understand how someone of Harris’s obvious lack of ability could become a serious contender for the White House. I explained the (very different) roles played by Willie Brown and Jim Clyburn.

But is it really terrible for our president to be an obvious incompetent? Some would say No. We have not had a functioning president since early in Joe Biden’s term; perhaps we have never had a real president from the day he was inaugurated. And even when Biden’s senility was revealed beyond dispute in the presidential debate, no one except a handful of conservative pundits and politicians seriously thought he should be removed from office. We had gotten along without a president for years, why worry about it now?

Kamala Harris would be a worthy successor to Joe Biden. While not senile, she is so untalented and so uninterested in any matters of policy–the most she can do is mouth left-wing platitudes, from which she is happy to retreat if they become a hindrance–that she could not, in any real sense, function as the president. The government would be run, as it has been for nearly four years, by the Deep State, the permanent bureaucracy, Washington insiders, the White House staff, Democratic Party oligarchs–describe the group how you will. The transition from the senile Joe Biden to the clueless Kamala Harris would be seamless.

This is the subject of Glenn Reynolds’ current column in the New York Post:

Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald recently tweeted, “The US has no functional president and has not had one for months, and it’s barely noticeable and barely matters because there’s a permanent unelected machine that runs the government.”
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And of course a whole collection of bureaucrats, interagency committees and even lobbyists (who often write federal legislation and agency regulations) may be basically steering the ship of state in the absence of an actual captain.

What’s surprising, though, is how little anyone seems to care.
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[M]aybe it’s just that those currently running the government like this president-less setup.

They have power without responsibility and without meaningful accountability.

No doubt careers are being built, lucrative contracts are being let, and favors are being traded in ways that would be much harder to pull off with a fully functioning brain in the Oval Office.
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The coming election offers a stark choice between a chief executive who will govern as an executive, and one more likely to serve as a colorless tool of special interests.

The special interests would prefer the tool.

If you read Glenn’s whole column, he is a little more sanguine than I am. I think that our democracy is rapidly circling the drain. There is progressively less relationship between policies that our government follows, especially at the national level, and wishes expressed by voters. We never voted for open borders, for DEI, for “trans” madness, for the destruction of reliable energy and our electrical grid. Most important decisions are made out of sight, and only nominally by those for whom we have voted.

Regardless of whom we elect, the permanent government will continue to press for ever more statist policies, the purpose of which is to expand the power of the state at the expense of the individual. It is notoriously difficult for Republican presidents to control the executive branch for which they are constitutionally responsible.

This year’s election is a critical point at which voters can try to stop the juggernaut of left-wing policies that they never chose. And in Donald Trump, we have a deeply flawed champion, but one who at least understands the problem and is committed to trying to solve it. It may be that 2024 is the people’s last, best hope to stop the tide of ever more powerful and intrusive unelected government.

And so, in a way completely different from what the Democrats propose, our democracy really is on the ballot this year.