OPINION:
BEDFORD, New Hampshire — All eyes are on the Republican primary here Tuesday but arguably the larger story is the primary that is not happening.
That would be the fake Democrat election here on the same day that Republican voters cast their first ballots in the 2024 primary.
Sure, registered Democrats in New Hampshire will turn out to cast ballots for their preferred candidate in the Democratic primary here Tuesday. But their votes will not be counted in the actual primary.
Yes, for more than 100 years, New Hampshire has enjoyed the status of being the first primary in the nation. In fact, state law requires that New Hampshire hold its primary at least one week before any other primary in the country. (This does not include the caucuses in Iowa, of course, because that is not a primary.)
For the first time, however, the votes cast in the Democrat primary here will be meaningless. They will not be counted in picking the Democrat Party’s presidential nominee.
“Live free or die” is the state’s motto. For Democrats, it’s “Live free or die — but your vote does not count.”
For a party that spends so much time talking about “protecting democracy” and “election integrity,” it is hard to fathom how Democrats could possible defend disenfranchising their own voters in a fake election with fake ballots.
And the reason they are holding this fake election is even more indefensible.
The Democratic National Committee, working at the direction of President Biden, has stripped New Hampshire voters of the right to vote in the primary this year because Mr. Biden did not like how these voters voted in their last primary election.
In 2020, Mr. Biden finished a humiliating fifth place behind ex-Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. It wasn’t until the South Carolina primary that Mr. Biden finally notched his first victory of the primary and set himself on a glidepath to the Democrat nomination.
Stop and think about that.
Mr. Biden was embarrassed by voters here four years ago so he decides to punish them by stripping them of their right to vote in this year’s Democrat primary.
And which voters do you think Mr. Biden decided to reward and elevate by allowing a real election — the coveted first primary in the nation?
If you guessed South Carolina, you would be right.
You vote against Mr. Biden, you lose your right to vote. You vote for Mr. Biden, you get to vote — and vote early.
As the primary here draws closer, many Democrats have awakened to the obvious. Mr. Biden and the Democratic National Committee are kicking off the 2024 election by stripping their own voters of the right to vote to punish them for voting for the “wrong” candidate in the last election. And they are doing this in an election that Democrats hope to make all about “democracy” and “election integrity.”
And they are doing all of this as Mr. Biden and Democrat politicians across the country try to kick former President Donald Trump off the general election ballot and are even working to throw him in jail so that they do not have to face him in November.
As the political consultants like to say, “the optics” could not be worse.
Responding to these “optics,” Democrats here have begun a late movement to get the party’s voters to write in Mr. Biden’s name in the hope that he might win the New Hampshire primary. It would, they hope, lessen the sting for denying these voters the right to cast their ballots and have them be counted.
But who knows? Maybe Mr. Biden loses anyway and suffers his second straight humiliating Granite State defeat.
• Charles Hurt is opinion editor.
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