The democrats haven’t held a legitimate primary since 2008!
In 2008 it was a genuine competition between Obama, Hillary, and a handful of other lesser known politicians. Obama won the general in a landslide.
In 2012 Obama ran unopposed. Obama won the general.
In 2016 the democrats rigged the primary against sanders for Hillary, and to absolutely no one’s surprise who was paying attention, Hillary lost the general. Why? she didn’t genuinely win the primary. Shocking!
In 2020, refusing to learn mistakes from 2016, the democrats once again screwed over bernie and didn’t run a legitimate primary - rigged it so that all the candidates except no-path-to-win Warren exited the race to split the progressive vote away from bernie. Joe biden won by the skin of his teeth, and he would of lost if it weren’t for the country reacting to trumps handling of covid.
In 2024, once again refusing to learn the democrats didn’t even bother with a primary, ran an old demented geezer as a presidential candidate, realized that wasn’t going to work, and then anointed unelected Kamala Harris who didn’t even need to compete in a primary.
And they’re shocked they lost?! These people make way too much money to be this stupid.
I mostly agree. I do think that a lot of folks on the left liked our candidate, though, and that a lot in the right disliked Trump but sucked it up and voted for him because they thought they “had” to. Harris’ likeability rating is way higher than Trump’s in the polls.
I don’t think any of this would have been an issue if Bernie was the Dem candidate in 2016.
I think the problem is that plenty of people might like Harris, but not so much that turnout for her matched Biden. The people who like Trump love him, and they turned out in the same numbers as 2020 basically. He didn’t need to meaningfully grow his base if people weren’t motivated to show up for his opponent.
It’s definitely a demonstration that having the most palatable candidate doesn’t matter. It might if voting were compulsory, but it isn’t.