No. of Recommendations: 6
If any of the old time regulars shocks the world and concedes the Dem party dropped the ball, and failed to offer a compelling alternative to Trump, please let us know.
I'm not certain whether you've blocked me. I am pretty certain you'd think I was an old time regular. I'm not sure it will shock the world if I "concede" the above, at least up to a point.
I mean, it's pretty self-evident that the Democratic party failed to offer a compelling alternative to Trump. Harris lost. It wasn't a landslide, but it also wasn't a "by a nose" finish, either. Trump won the election, which is almost prima facie evidence that Harris wasn't a compelling alternative to him.
Did the party drop the ball? Somewhat. As we discussed ad nauseum back in the day, we're not in the pre-1968 world. The party has a lot of influence in the outcome, because it sets the rules, but it doesn't play as much of a formal role in choosing the nominee. Two things happened that the party had no real ability to "overrule": i) Biden declared he would run for re-election in early 2023; and ii) nobody significant chose to run against him.
Could the party have changed that? I'm not sure. Clearly by the end of June 2024 (the disastrous debate performance) Biden was in very bad shape - which is why he had to leave the race. Several of the more prominent anecdotes that have been talked about in advance of the book (Obama having to guide Biden off-stage, the Clooney fundraiser) happened around that time as well. But the real relevant time frame where the party could have taken action would have been only up to about the end of 2023, when someone could have been drafted into the race without having to change the rules.
There's no doubt that in late 2023, there were concerns swirling about Biden's age - after all, it's what voters identified as one of their main concerns about him. And there was enough concern that his March 2024 SOTU speech was seen as a test he had to pass, rather than a routine event. But was there enough out there that the party could have persuaded him to give up his spot on the ticket? Certainly not - and especially not after the SOTU.
Biden needed to publicly fail for the Democratic party to have had the ability to do anything that could materially affect him continuing on the ticket. And that didn't happen until after March of 2024. And by then, it was too late for anyone but Harris.
