The Great Thing about DU and the Democratic Primaries Forum [View all]

is that we can call on Democratic candidates to do things freely. Sure, they don't read the forum, themselves, but the "open letter" sort of thing has a long tradition in political campaigns.

Today, I called on Bernie Sanders to withdraw from the race and endorse Joe Biden in a thread-opening post. Just to be clear, I did not expect that Bernie Sanders would read my post and consider my suggestion. He doesn't read DU, as far as I know.

A number of people agreed with my "open letter" to Bernie Sanders, which is not surprising. What is surprising was that a couple of people suggested that I should not be so presumptuous as to tell Bernie Sanders what he should do.

The great thing about the United States is that we all have a voice that we can use to address our elected officials and those who seek elective office. We are free to address those people directly, either in a communication addressed to them, or in any public forum. That's one of our priceless privileges in this country.

So, am I presumptuous to suggest that Bernie Sanders drop out and endorse Joe Biden? Sure I am. He doesn't know me, and I have only one vote in this primary election season. I've already used that vote. I voted for Joe Biden, to nobody's surprise. I've been displaying his photo in this forum since the forum was created.

What I think is presumptuous is telling someone they should not address a suggestion to a candidate. That's just a strange thing to do. People do that all the time on DU. It's an open forum, so "open letter" posts are perfectly appropriate here. It's fine to disagree with the suggestion someone makes, but not so fine to suggest that they shouldn't make those suggestions.