 Lately, we've been talking a lot about the growing authoritarianism within the GOP, thanks to Donald Trump and his stop the steal nonsense, but there's a lot of Democrats who basically are as equally maniacal and nefarious when it comes to subverting the will of the people and hurting democracy if it serves their political interests. So the city of Buffalo in New York, they are considering an entirely new type of governance. It's not that new, but they're thinking we'll be charitable here and we'll call it innovatively, right? They're trying to rather than having like this old antiquated position of mayor, they want to try to create this position of city manager, because perhaps since mayors in the past haven't been great, this is going to be a better way to better serve the people of Buffalo. Now, as I read you the details of this story, this is a brief story, but as I read this to you, question why they would be planning something like this. I mean, there's a bit of a spoiler behind me if you've heard about this story before, but nonetheless, like think to yourself, what would make them want to do something like this? So the Buffalo News reports, the Buffalo Common Council will explore a city manager form of governance to replace the office of mayor under such a plan, a city manager would be selected by the nine member council in conjunction with the community to carry out the will of the council members. University council member Rashid N.C. Wyatt told the Buffalo News, the report is due in 90 days, about two weeks before the November mayoral election in which Byron Brown, this is the incumbent mayor, is waging a right in campaign after losing the Democratic primary to political upstart India Walton. Any change that eliminates the office of mayor would have to come via a citywide ballot referendum, which would be all but impossible to get on the ballot by November. The council, which goes into recess in August, adopted the resolution Tuesday. South City Council member Christopher P. Scanlon voted in the negative saying a majority of five council members selecting a city manager instead of tens of thousands of voters appointing a mayor could lead to some quote nefarious behavior. Yeah, I'll say it's almost as if just subverting the will of the people in order to unilaterally appoint someone to be the mayor or city manager is a bad idea because that is deeply authoritarian. Now, it's not like parties choosing who the leader will be is unheard of in democracies. I mean, in parliamentary systems, the prime minister is the individual who's the leader of the party who gets the most votes. But here what they're specifically doing and why it's authoritarian is they're trying to get rid of a role because they don't like the outcome of the election. And therefore they're trying to actively subvert the will of the people. That is deeply authoritarian and it's nefarious. What this is about is that somebody who they don't like beat the person who they do like. And in order to stop her from winning an election that she is overwhelmingly likely to win, they just want to get rid of her position all together. And it is incredibly transparent. And it's bad enough that the individual who she beat Byron Brown, the four term incumbent, he's refusing to concede. He won't concede. He was defeated in the Democratic Party primary by an insurgent, socialist candidate. And rather than refusing to concede, he's using a couple of tricks out of Trump's playbook and he's calling her a radical socialist and he's running a right in campaign, a right in campaign. So these Democrats make no mistake about it. They are no better than the stop the steel Republicans. They are no better than the Republicans in states like Georgia and Texas who are passing these voter suppression laws, voter ID laws, you know, reducing mail-in voting and ballot drop boxes. These Democrats are no better than those Republicans because they're literally trying to rig the process so they create a government that is more favorable to them ideologically. And that is deeply, deeply disgusting and authoritarian. And it really like it goes to show you how far these Democrats and Buffalo are willing to go to stop democracy from taking place. The people of Buffalo elected India Walton. She won. She beat the four-term incumbent. Deal with it. Get over it. You don't get to choose to subvert their will because you don't like who they chose. Too bad. Oftentimes elections don't go our way. But that doesn't mean that you get to just do away with the position entirely to stop her from becoming mayor. This is insanity. Like the fact that they're even considering this, they should be embarrassed with themselves. Anyone who voted in favor of this, they should be ashamed of themselves. Just admit that you hate democracy. I mean, imagine if the Senate, which was controlled by Republicans in 2020, if they didn't like that Joe Biden beat Donald Trump, so instead what they chose to do was replace the position of president with prime minister and just like appoint someone to that position so that way they didn't have to deal with Joe Biden taking power. These Democrats and Buffalo, I think would rightfully call out those authoritarian Republicans who are very clearly and deliberately trying to subvert the will of voters. But when they do it at the local level, they think it's perfectly reasonable. And sure it's the case that this isn't going to take effect even if it were to take effect before she assumes power, but still if they can get rid of this position altogether and limit the amount of influence that voters have, or if nothing else, scare voters to thinking that their votes are going to be taken away from them when it comes to mayor if they vote for someone who the city council doesn't like, it's just mission accomplished for them. So they should be absolutely embarrassed. Every single person who voted in favor of this should be resigning, there should be mass pressure from the people of Buffalo on city council here to get them to all step down because they are very clearly coming out in favor of getting rid of democracy. And that is disgusting. Like the thing about democracy is that you need people to buy into democracy. You need people to accept the outcomes of elections. This is what I've been preaching nonstop for months now about the Republican Party. So when people do it on the Democratic Party side, it also has to be called out. Like this is just, this is gross. But I mean, it's exactly what we'd expect from authoritarians stop the steal type of Democrats. Back in 2020, even individuals like Joe Biden floated this idea of getting super delegates to override the will of voters if Bernie Sanders was selected, but he didn't have like a majority of pledge delegates. So this isn't the first time that Democrats have shown their authoritarian cards, but this is something that cannot stand. It's something that cannot stand. Anytime Democrats stoop to this level and they're no better than Republicans, they have to be called out and they have to be pressured to leave office and resign because this is totally unacceptable.