peel back effect

Letter to the Editor: Writer wants better choices in the presidential election

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Will we really have to choose between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in 2024?

Let’s hope not.

  • Isn’t Biden an unaccomplished career politician who never really had to work for a living beyond politics? Who got elected president by promising to reunite the nation with moderation and instead became the most liberal big-government president in U.S. history? Who chose his vice president, Cabinet secretaries and other appointments primarily for their knee-jerk beliefs, instead of their competence?
  • Isn’t Trump driven solely by his own enormously (and unjustifiably) inflated ego and not by any personal ethics or political principles? Who has switched parties as quickly as he allegedly abuses women and as often as he gets sued for his business deals? Whose accomplishments occurred only when he left the issues to others because he was too busy stroking his own ego and creating chaos?

Are they the best this country has to offer? Of course not.

Surveys clearly show that a vast majority of Americans don’t want a Biden-Trump rematch.

So why would the two major political parties consider nominating Biden and Trump?

  • Is it because the Democrats think Biden could beat Trump again and because the Republicans think Trump could beat Biden?
  • But wouldn’t the American people be the losers, regardless of either of those outcomes?

The truth is that both parties have become much more polarized than voters. Both parties hold primary elections that are controlled by extremists because they’re the ones who vote in the low-turnout primaries. Most voters don’t turn out until the general election, and then, they’re often forced to choose between a far-left Democrat or a far-right Republican.

That’s why most Americans should favor open primaries — in which all of us can vote, regardless of party affiliation — with the top two going to the final ballot, regardless of party affiliation. That would force the candidates to appeal to the vast majority of commonsense citizens, not just their own party’s extremist minorities. But, of course, the professional politicians prefer the control the closed primaries give them, so citizens will have to fight for open primaries. And it won’t happen soon enough to help us in 2024.

I’m a member and supporter of No Labels, which is planning to offer a third choice — a “unity ticket” of a moderate Democrat and a moderate Republican — if both the Democrats and Republicans nominate candidates as unpopular as Biden and Trump. Their plan is to choose their ticket in summer 2024, after the Democratic and Republican conventions. But would that be too late for the unity ticket to generate the funding and enthusiasm needed to win on Nov. 5? Let’s hope not.

But we could also hope that the threat of a unity ticket could cause the Democrats or Republicans — and hopefully both — to choose better candidates than Biden or Trump. They could hardly do worse.

Joe Smyth

Scottsdale, Arizona

Editor’s note: Joe Smyth is a former board chair of Independent Newsmedia Inc. USA, the parent company of the Delaware State News. He’s now retired, and the opinions expressed here are his own.

 

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