A few Democratic officeholders, activists, and pundits are finally coming to their senses that their brand is toxic to a majority of the American people.

The Biden administration killed what was left of it in a number of ways.

First, it serially lied to Americans about the cognitive decline and cancerous condition of President Biden, both while in and after office.

Only when caught did the complicit press own up that the Biden inner circle serially misled the American people about Mr. Biden’s inability to fulfill the duties of the presidency.

Second, left-wing politicos used Mr. Biden as a waxen effigy. His job was to pose as a “moderate” cover to push through the most radical and unpopular agenda in the last half century.

Only that way could “Old Joe Biden from Scranton” and his backroom handlers ram down the throat of the American people unpopular policies that nearly wrecked the country: hyperinflation and $7 trillion in new debt, weaponization of the government, and partisan lawfare, an open border and 12 million illegal aliens, a racialist DEI commissariat, a crackpot Green New Deal, defunding the police, biological men competing in girls’ sports, and two theater-wide wars abroad.

Third, without either a functional president or viable initiatives, the new hard-left Democrats sought to brand President Trump as “Hitler” and half the country who supported him as “fascists.”

For nearly nine years, the Democrats launched one failed hoax after another on the American people: “Russian collusion,” “laptop disinformation,” and the lying so-called “51 intelligence authorities.” They proved quite willing to undermine the rule of law by manipulating the court system in efforts to destroy their bogeyman, Mr. Trump.

Never had the American people seen a political party engineer 93 bogus indictments of a rival candidate and ex-president. Two-dozen states tried to take Mr. Trump off their presidential ballots. And the Biden Department of Justice’s FBI even raided Mr. Trump’s home.

The people finally got tired of all the potty-mouthed Democrat videos, the congressional stunts and meltdowns, the pampered rich kids rioting on elite campuses, the knee-jerk obsessions with racial slurs, the firebombing of Tesla dealerships, the romanticization of left-wing political murderers — and always the adolescent tantrums over Mr. Trump.

The Democrats had mostly given up on democracy some 13 years ago. That was the last time they transparently and democratically nominated President Obama for a second time as their candidate.

Ever since, their nominations have been rigged.

In 2020, party insiders — terrified of the left-wing crazy primary field — forced out all the leading contenders.

Then they crowned the debilitated but still supposedly useful moderate Mr. Biden as their Covid-era candidate. Mr. Biden then bragged that he would pick his vice president on the basis of race and gender.

What followed was the most bizarre campaign in history.

Mr. Biden stayed put in his basement and outsourced his candidacy to the partisan media.

Party activists changed long-standing voting laws in the key swing states. For the first time in American history, 70 percent of Americans did not vote in-person on Election Day — the majority of them by design Democrats.

Next, in 2024, they forced the now no longer useful Mr. Biden off the ticket, nullifying his 14 million primary voters.

Then, without a vote, they rammed in Vice President Harris as the nominee. As a failed candidate in 2020, she had never won a single delegate.

Some in the party now concede it must roust out its radicals.

Yet Democrats will not.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her Squad, the Congresswoman Jasmine Crocketts of the party, and the ossified socialist “Bernie Bros” would demonize any Democrat who offered a sane reboot.

A few fossils in the party may think they know how to save it. But they are terrified that the medicine would be considered far worse than the illness that prompted it.

Would Democrats consider embracing measured and legal-only immigration?

No — the crazy base would scream “xenophobe.”

A return to meritocracy and Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s notion of race as incidental, not essential, to who we are?

Again, that would be called “racist.”

Maybe reforms to fix failed schools with vouchers, school choice, and charter schools?

Again, “racist.”

How about developing gas and oil reserves and nuclear power to lower energy costs for the struggling middle class?

That would be condemned as “destroying the planet.”

Restore police forces, end critical race and legal theory, and deter criminals with tough sentencing?

Again, “racist.”

How about ceasing the whiny fixations with “white privilege” and “white rage”? Or quit seeing a “white supremacist” under every bed?

Again, “racist.”

The left created DEI — the use of race to adjudicate every political issue.

And like any addictive, toxic drug, they now can neither survive with DEI — nor without it.

Tribune Content Agency