The Democrats continue to run to course—manipulating. Most recently, they bullied Joe Biden out of the presidential race. Their history for the last decade has been one of manipulation and dirty tricks, false promises and anti-democratic actions. They campaign claiming Trump is out to destroy democracy when at the same time can't seem to find enough anti-democratic ways to behave themselves.

Dirty tricks have long been a part of politics, but in the last decade the Democrats have turned the machine up to 11. The year 2015 was a pivotal one in that it presented to the American people a massive plot to undermine a candidate for president based solely on direct lies. Russiagate was comprehensive in scope, touching not only on candidate Trump but also on his advisors and key staff. The plot was so outrageous—Trump was an actual Russian agent, a living Manchurian candidate—that it had to be true.

The mainstream media certainly believed it. Indeed, the media’s hand-in-glove cooperation with the Democrats is another key feature of the last decade’s shenanigans. Had the Democrats had a straight-forward enough candidate to run against Trump (Hillary dragged way too much baggage around with her to beat a Trump in the process of creating a movement with MAGA, never mind winning a normal election).

Clinton was not necessarily the only loser in 2016. “The seeds,” writes the New York Times, “of President Biden’s reaction to the Democratic Party’s 2024 crisis of confidence in him were planted years ago... It was in October 2015 when Biden, then vice president, announced in the White House Rose Garden that he would not run against Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination.”

What was left unsaid was the manipulation applied to Biden to not take his case to the people but instead allow Clinton, Obama, and Obama’s camp-followers to force him to the sidelines. He was manipulated into not running to clear the path for Hillary. Bernie was dealt with by a similar process, leaving behind a very successful run only to be humiliated at the convention as a has-been. The anti-democratic message to both men was clear: Tonight ain’t your night, kid, the boys from Chicago got the fix in. Yer gonna have to take da’ dive.

Trump’s 2016 win was not the end of the Democrats’ manipulation and dirty tricks, simply the beginning of another phase. In addition to the remnants of the whole extended Russiagate plot, Trump faced down the Emoluments Clause threats, two impeachments, multiple hoaxes about his alleged relations to Russia, and a bizarre celebrity Twitter contest about the best way to decapitate Trump (a full list here.)

The intent was to try and drive Trump from office either indirectly by humiliating him or directly, by claiming he was mentally ill and the 25th Amendment needed to be invoked. If he could not be actually removed from office, the manipulations were hoped to neuter the president politically even as he still sat in the Oval Office. That they all failed was not for a lack of trying on the part of the Democrats.

If the 2024 presidential campaign started the day Trump left office in January 2021, so did the Democratic manipulation campaign against him, this round built on lawfare, the manipulation of actual laws to force Trump into court, convict him as a felon, maybe bankrupt him, certainly embarrass him, all in hopes of driving him from the race or at a minimum weaken his hold on large numbers of voters. Though several cases will likely drag on through the election, they concluded accomplished none of their goals. If anything, Trump the martyr is stronger as a candidate than ever before. What matters here is the ongoing pattern of dirty tricks and manipulations, not whether they succeed, or, like the impeachments and the trials, fail in their larger political purposes.

The 2020 election between Trump and Biden was close, so close that the appearance of a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden which showed both Hunter and Joe tangled up in foreign money could have swung the race. Democrats again responded with a manipulation, another full-on falsehood, with 52 deep-state personnel writing an open letter claiming the laptop was likely Russian disinformation designed to discredit Biden and smear the tail end of the campaign. With Big Tech canceling Twitter accounts that sought to tell the truth and the usual prime time pundits barking in unison about the false nature of the laptop, what should have been a turning point in the campaign was squashed.

The next Manipulation Grande started in the 2020 campaign, hiding a very old and senile Joe Biden from voters so they did not know what kind of man they were actually voting for. In the 2020 campaign the broad excuse was Covid, relegating Biden to a campaign by TV out of his basement. It was actually a good gimmick for a weary nation, and no one suspected it was all flim-flam to hide Biden's growing dementia. Once past the victorious 2020 campaign, the media were enlisted to hide Biden's age-related dilemmas from the public through editing, selective camera angles, denials, and just plain old falsehoods. Biden literally tripped down the stairs of Air Force One several times without much comment from the pundits; why should they comment? they were in on the game, ignoring the real Biden unscripted at events all over the country.

In fighting for his political life, Biden cited the “fact” that he won the primaries for the 2024 election. The question is, Whom did people vote for: a spry, older man or a manipulated image of an unhealthy octogenarian? Among other reasons, Biden emphasized the will of Democratic primary voters. “The voters of the Democratic Party have voted. They have chosen me to be the nominee of the party. Do we now just say this process didn’t matter? That the voters don’t have a say?” Biden wrote in a letter to fellow Democrats. “It was their decision to make. Not the press, not the pundits, not the big donors, not any selected group of individuals, no matter how well-intentioned. The voters—and the voters alone—decide the nominee of the Democratic Party.”

Others differed. “We never had a real primary process. We never had a real debate in this country,” said one observer. “Everybody decided, for their own political reasons, that the best option was to shut down dissent, shut off choice, and force the public into this choice of an election they never wanted any part of.” That’s called manipulation.

What will happen to Kamala, and what will be her cooked up October Surprise? And whither the party, likely to lose in 2024 despite a decade of failed manipulations devoted to winning? Will they play fair next round?