What is this “democracy” you speak of?
by digby
John McCain was just born to be a tyrant. He hid it well for a few years, but it’s always been under there, lurking, waiting until his ambitions were burned out and he could be himself:
“We’ve got to stop the debates,” McCain told Meet The Press’ David Gregory. “Enough with the debates, because they are driving up our candidates’, all of them, unfavorability. We have enough of that. They’ve turned into mud wrestling instead of an exposition of all our candidates views. And it’s time to recognize who the real adversary is, and it’s not each other.”
In every election there are a bunch of people demanding that candidates drop out, to stop the debates, to end the primaries because it’s hurting the ballclub. There is a very strong strain in our country (a bipartisan one, by the way) to not allow the people to decide who’s going to run for president. (This is the same impulse that immediately writes off everyone but the anointed frontrunner — anointed, by the way, by a bunch of millionaires and the Village press corps.)
I realize it’s uncomfortable for everyone’s chosen candidate to have to compete for votes and make his case in something besides a 30 second ad, but it’s still nice to let people at least pretend that they are participating in this thing we call “democracy.” Presidential Debates are just about the only thing we’ve done to further that cause in the past 30 years — so naturally the establishment is clamoring to end them.
The system will survive and the eventual nominee will come out ok. Everybody should just relax.