Friend,

In all the hoopla surrounding Joe Biden handing off the baton to Kamala Harris, it seems like no one in the corporate mainstream media is talking about an uncomfortable reality: this is the third presidential election in a row where the so-called Democratic Party has effectively denied voters any meaningful choice in the primaries.

We’ve started calling it the anti-Democratic Party due to the Dems’ relentless attempts to kick Greens and others off the ballot, infiltrate and sabotage their competitors, and use a whole arsenal of dirty tricks to keep voters like you from having a real choice. But as if that weren’t bad enough, DNC elites have made an art of subverting their own primaries to deny their own voters a real choice.

In 2016, emails from DNC insiders published by Wikileaks revealed how the party used its influence to sabotage Bernie Sanders (while urging their powerful media contacts to “elevate” Donald Trump, who they saw as a preferred opponent). Between the subterfuge and the outsized voting power of party insiders known as “superdelegates”, they never gave Sanders a chance.

Then in 2020 when Sanders was gaining momentum in the primaries, it only took a few calls from party elites to make a crowded field of centrists all drop out and line up behind Biden.

In the 2024 cycle, anti-Democratic Party insiders insisted that Biden would be the candidate and no real primary could be allowed. Several state parties refused to put any candidate other than Biden on the ballot (sound familiar?).

And now Biden has handed the nomination to his hand-picked successor - all without having to get a single voter involved.

The DNC elites’ hand-picked candidate is the same Kamala Harris who dropped out of the 2020 primaries due to plummeting in the polls before a single vote was cast. Harris’ record promoting mass incarceration and her corporate-friendly agenda may have flopped with voters, but in the anti-Democratic Party, it’s not the voters who decide - it’s the party insiders.

While the anti-democratic duopoly’s candidates are backed by billionaires and political elites, we refuse to take money from wealthy special interests and rely 100% on grassroots supporters like you to power this campaign. Please pitch in whatever you can today to support our fight for real democracy!

While the Dems preach ad nauseam about how they’re “saving democracy”, in reality they’ve been waging war on democracy - even inside their own party. Underneath the rhetoric, their actions have been clearly aimed at one thing: preserving the power and privilege of party elites above all else.

The anti-Democratic Party plays a key role in maintaining the corporate duopoly’s stranglehold on our government. While over 60% of US voters say the two-party system is failing so badly to represent us that we need a new party, the anti-Democrats are working hard to make sure they don’t have that choice.

Like the Biden campaign, the Harris campaign is a front for empire and oligarchy, presenting only the illusion of choice.

That’s why it’s so critical that we continue leading the fight for real democracy with a campaign that’s powered by small donors and grassroots volunteers.

We’re building a movement to revive our democracy with a full spectrum of reforms to empower the people, including ranked-choice voting, proportional representation, full public campaign financing to get big money out of politics, and much more. See our platform on democracy for more on our plan to bring real democracy to the US.

Thank you for everything you do to grow the movement for people, planet, and peace!

In solidarity and gratitude,

Team Jill Stein