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LurkerJ said:
Highly likely the story is accurate giving the source, the external polling numbers we had, and the fact that we were all aware of the highly unusual pressure he faced to step aside; other stories of similar importance were confirmed by Pelosi (Biden shutting any opportunity for an a primary process by endorsing Kamala). Giving the number of votes that decided the swing states, it's not accurate to say the dems "were doomed". Doomed means no alternative reality would've changed the outcome, but the number of votes needed to change the outcome is actually small; stress testing the candidacy might have allowed someone else to run, what we know about Kamala's popularity in 2019 and her ability to energise voters is in line with the numbers we're seeing now. It's not hard to see how another 2024 primary would've had given us similar warnings about who shouldn't and should run for president, and flipped the few votes that decided the swing states blue. |
First of all, Harris lost PA alone by 150k votes.
As for hypotheticals, there isn't really any way to know how things would have been different if Biden initially chose not to rerun. My opinion though is that Harris ran a damn good campaign, benefitted from a lot of momentum and enthusiasm when Biden dropped out (which also kept Trump and his attacks off balance for a while), didn't have to go through a difficult primary and was able to run a campaign focused on the general election from the start. She also had ample funding a strong ground game. Given this, I don't see any other Democrat as having a lot of room for improvement, even if they got through the primary unscathed and ran a perfect campaign.
IMO, saying that this election was close is cope. It was not close and imo it was not about the candidate or the campaign, it was about the party and the national environment.
I'm sticking with my original opinion: Dems were doomed from the start.
