Mayfield: Do you like democracy or not? The choice couldn’t be more stark.

What the actual heck is going on in this country right now?

Our democracy is facing a 5-alarm inferno. We have an avowed arsonist with a stockpile of gasoline and flamethrowers telling us explicitly each day what he’s going to burn. If this were a Fahrenheit 451 remake, critics would be howling that it was too over-the-top frightening and real.

Yet what are seemingly otherwise rational groups and institutions doing? They are aiming their fire hoses at the house across that street that isn’t on fire.

Let’s start with Democrats who cannot stop hating the current firefighter already on the scene who has a track record of putting out this fire before. Poll after poll shows Democrats moaning about his age or daydreaming about another candidate.

You know who had many different candidates and still picked the one nearly as old as the sitting President?! The team that’s cheering the fascism flames.

And then there are the Democrats who are now actively campaigning against President Biden.

“Hey, Democrats, you’re losing and can’t afford to be uncommitted,” reads Danny Westneat’s Seattle Times column earlier this week.

Thousands of Democratic primary voters now apparently think that unless President Biden can fix a crisis that has been going on for thousands of years in the next week, they aren’t voting for him.

You know who for sure won’t fix the crisis in Gaza? The guy who wants to be a day-one dictator and who just said Israel needs to “finish the problem.” You get one guess who he thinks that problem here is?

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Can we also talk for a minute about the runaways? We literally have a former Democratic congressman from Seattle who is now hiding out in France. Jim McDermott was a liberal lion around here and in DC for a long time. Now he’s watching his neighbor’s chickens and writing strongly worded emails from the European countryside. Thanks, Dude. Big help.

As for our trusted institutions? The Supreme Court doesn’t even count these days. Congress can’t agree that we should protect IVF for people wanting to start families.  And the media? Well the New York Times is going on week three now with its wall-to-wall coverage of Biden’s age. And when it did run a story profiling Biden supporters this week the paper of record in this country called them lonely and bewildered.

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Finally, can we talk about the American public as a whole? Have you seen these new polls saying people have forgotten most of the racist, misogynistic and vile things the last guy said and did during his 4 years in the White House? Republicans remember only that the stock market went up, and Democrats vaguely recall being outraged a lot by what they can’t recall. As for swing voters, honestly, I’m confused about how they can “swing” between the two options anyway: do you like democracy or not?

So, here we are, eight months away from an election that will determine the future of this Republic, and we are all actively playing with fire.

Travis Mayfield is a fill-in host and commentator on KIRO Newsradio.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.