Questions new democracy group
In founding Governors Safeguarding Democracy, blue state Democratic Governors Jared Polis of Colorado and JB Pritzker of Illinois are just perpetuating the same fundraising grift by which Kamala Harris' losing presidential campaign raised $1.4 billion from her supporters, most of which was wasted on expenses such as paying the Reverend Al Sharpton's nonprofit and Oprah Winfrey's studio hundreds of thousands for softball interviews of the outgoing vice president. ["LGBTQ Agenda: Gay Colorado Governor Polis co-chairing new democracy group," November 26.]
If Polis and Pritzker are truly concerned by the return of the "authoritarian" Trump administration, then perhaps they should have used their influence to press for an open presidential primary instead of propping up an obviously frail and declining incumbent, even when a majority of Democrats considered President Joe Biden to be too feeble to continue for another four years in the most powerful office in the world. Perhaps they should have dissented when the party then consolidated around a vacuous and unpopular replacement who couldn't win her own state in the last open primary. [Editor's note: Harris, then the junior U.S. senator from California, had dropped out of the 2020 presidential race in December 2019, before the state's primary.]
Rather than reflexively opposing the popularly-elected incoming administration, including trying to resist the return of illegal aliens to their countries of origin, perhaps these governors should focus on serving the interests and needs of their own voters. Without any congressional authorization, the outgoing administration just gave the Ukrainian government authorization to launch missile strikes into the territory of its nuclear-armed neighbor, Russia. Why aren't these Democratic governors expressing their outrage over such an "autocratic" and dangerous (as well as futile) escalation of that conflict?
Colin Gallagher
San Francisco
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