Don't forget ignored all indications that their campaign was losing voters and those same voters being very vocal about what needed to happen if they wanted to keep them
The "I am speaking!" is so funny to me.
"Hello, please stop doing genocide or I wont vote fo-" "I AM SPEAKING!" "Okay, I guess you don't want my vote then." Democrats crash and burn
It's not just the vote, people who have the energy to show up to protest have the energy to go out and knock on doors, raise funds, evangelize to friends and neighbors. The "well there's no rational alternative so I guess I have no choice" folks will vote for you, but they won't do anything to get anyone else's vote.
the only part of the campain that was not a desaster in my estemation was picking Walz as VP as that looked almost as if they where going to move to the more progressive wing... then they ignored all of that and I garentee that thye will scapegoat walz as being too radical and scaring away the moderates, mark my words
If they had chosen to hold a primary it would have had the advantage of completely blocking the republicans out of free media. They would have had all the attention.
Literally half the posts the things getting upvoted are "this isnwhat happens when you force a candidate on people who got 4% in a dem primary then alienate progressives in favor of campaigning with cheyneys"
And then in places like r/politics that exact same sentiment gets 100 downvotes.
I actually just saw a highly upvoted comment in politics saying "I'm not going tonwaste time talking to somebody who thinks politicians can pick who endorses them"
Then the original guy asked who forced harris to bring her around the country to campaign rally and got obliterated with downvoted again.
Incredibly, liberals will still learn nothing from this.
I know he gets a lot of shit but John Stewart's joke when it happened was to repeateadly say "fuck you go away" and then call back to that joke like 4 times.
Love when the late night comedians have better political instincts than the politicians they're reporting on.
What amazes me is that anyone thinks the Democrats lost. Being pratfall artists is what they're paid to do, this is the result they wanted the whole time.
It would make sense if joe were popular, but he really wasnt. Thinking they could just copy/paste his agenda on to a different person and win was deeply unserious, just like leftists kept screaming every damn day until this morning
The more pertinent thing might be that the candidate they were anointing historically had not a shadow of a chance at winning. Primaries aren't a terribly good way of seeing who would do best in the general, but if you're doing that cataclysmically bad, you probably shouldn't just be handed the nomination anyway. It's sincerely like they were trying to lose.
The way you win elections in the US is getting your side to show up on election day. There's so much voter disenfranchisement and suppression you need to campaign with those factors in mind. You're absolutely right Harris' failures in the primary should have been a red flag. You have to get people excited and mobilized, while making it easier for them to cast their ballots.
That she dropped out so early was a bad sign for her campaign. Dems either haven't learned a got damn thing since Obama or they're doing it intentionally.
There was also the component of controlling the campaign war chest and infrastructure
Harris could just hop in the driver seat bc she already was on the ticket.
She actually had juice right after the switch, then proceeded to just piss it away over the next few weeks
All she had to do was distance herself from Biden with some meaningful policies but it turns out she's really bad at this... Which nobody could have foreseen given her primary performance
At the time, she was the best candidate because she was the only one with the national name brand. The problem was that she didn't run a real primary, because if there was an open primary she might not have won.
By the time Biden dropped out, yes, she was really the only choice, logistically. I think at that point, 3 months ago, there was basically nothing the dems could have done to have won this. They could have made it closer, but any real shot at a candidate people liked, would have needed to have gotten spooled up a year ago, at minimum, two years ago ideally.
The DNC shares so much blame for overall strategy of the last decade+, but the decision for Biden to insist on aiming for a 2nd term the whole time, despite pressure, and only cave when the saw just how grim those final projections really were, is mostly his, personally.