Democratic oligarchs thwarted the will of 14 million voters after President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he would not seek re-election.

For years, Democrats have breathlessly claimed that “democracy” (in our constitutional republic) is in danger if former President Donald Trump wins. But apparently the threshold for risk to “democracy” depends on the likelihood of victory. When it became clear that Biden could not overcome the consensus that he was incapable of performing the duties of a presidential candidate after his terrifying debate performance, Democrats moved to undermine the will of their own voters in order to increase their chances of retaining power.

Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., admitted she did not believe Biden “could campaign effectively and win against Donald Trump.” Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., echoed a similar sentiment, telling The New York Times that Democrats “need to win this race” and Biden “needs to get out of this race.”

Their concerns were based simply on whether their party could win. That’s why 17 lawmakers who called for Biden to resign did not respond when asked by The Federalist whether they agreed that Biden should resign as president.

Simply put, Democratic voters who voted for Biden are now being told by a handful of elites in Washington DC that their vote was merely a voluntary decision.

As George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said in a post on X, “Vice President Kamala Harris will now be in the difficult position of having to take the lead in ‘defending democracy,’ having been appointed the nominee through succession by defenestration.”

Biden offered no explanation for his monumental decision to withdraw from the race after extensively denying reports that he would not remain the nominee. Of course, a verbal “why” is unnecessary: ​​Biden showed the American public why he could not remain the nominee when he failed to speak coherently during the presidential debate and had difficulty leaving the debate stage without assistance. So the Democrats launched a blitz campaign against the sitting president, demanding that he resign. They knew that the chances of Biden beating Trump were diminishing, so they had to do what was necessary to maintain control of the executive branch.

But for the same reasons that Biden cannot be the nominee, he cannot be the president either. No one disagrees that Biden’s cognitive decline seriously impairs his ability to perform his enumerated duties — it’s why Democrats want to take him off the ballot. Removing Biden as the nominee becomes a justifiable usurpation of the will of primary voters when Democrats also remove Biden as president. But if Democrats are unwilling to invoke the 25th Amendment, or let Biden resign, then their justification is simply a flex of their political muscle: “We can do whatever we want.”

And if Democrats can take out their own candidate so easily, what else can they do?

Brianna Lyman is an election correspondent for The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in international political economy. Her work has appeared on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business, and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2