[shadowgovt]

The Democrats chose Biden in the election. If a party's candidate cannot serve, there is a process to choose a new candidate, which is not a general party election. (https://www.vox.com/2016/9/12/12887632/if-presidential-nomin...).

There's a very good reason for this: those general elections cost states money. Money they have not budgeted to re-run a primary. In addition, in most states, the primary is framed in a legal process that does not allow for an "out-of-band" second election. It would, generally, have been illegal to re-run an election (at least using the physical voting apparatus of the myriad states) to choose an alternate when Biden dropped, which is why the party chooses via their own process.

And as far as I'm aware, that process was followed following Biden's announcement. I wouldn't accuse Republicans of being uneducated and naive if people didn't vote for Harris because "she never won a primary..." I'd accuse traditional Democrat voters of not knowing very much about the party they (nominally) tend to support. It'd be nice if civics weren't just something people's parents and grandparents did.

As for being an outsider... In 2024, I fail to see how voters would think a former President could be considered outside the system.

[aftbit]

Biden should have simply refused to run again in 2024. There was already signalling to this effect in 2019, though it was never explicitly promised.[1][2] If he had just kept to that, there would have been plenty of time to run a primary and an actually strong candidate could have been selected.

1: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/12/joe-biden-one-te...

2: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/06/biden-president-...

[ttw44]

My understanding is that Biden was very concerned about his legacy and there are rumors about the "no daylight" phrase he spoke with Harris on her campaign and probably part of the reason she lost. But Biden should have dropped down much earlier and will taint his legacy forever. At least he passed the infrastructure bill.

[ElevenLathe]

Not to rehash this for the 1000th time, but I really don't understand this point of view. Why assume that everything before the Biden drop-out was unchangeable and ordained by God?

It is very clear that, long before the primary, Biden was not fit to run again, probably not even fit to stay in office. A functioning party would have gotten their senile standard-bearer to at least not run again, ideally even step down and let his VP take office and build a relationship with voters. Either way, they could have run a real primary and therefore chosen somebody that Democratic voters might actually have been excited about voting for in the general election. This may even have been Harris, but a version of Harris with a much better shot at winning because she'd spent an additional year or so campaigning.

Why is this an impossible set of events? If it isn't, why not lay the blame for this colossally bad fuckup at the feet of the Democratic leadership?

[shadowgovt]

I wouldn't, personally, have had any issue with such a scenario. My comment was in response to the pervasive and wrong idea that the Democrats could have "just" re-run the primary when Biden dropped after being elected in that primary.

I think people believe elections are internet-fast or internet-convenient, which is where this skewed idea comes from. They aren't, for reasons that should be obvious with some consideration about how elections are secured.

[kelipso]

They could have had a mini primary leading to the Democrat convention in August and let the voters in the convention (electors?) decide from multiple candidates while taking polls into account, for example. Having a memory, I do remember people discussing the option of mini primaries. Harris wasn’t pre-ordained, she was just a bad decision that Democrat insiders made without input from the outside.

[shadowgovt]

What is a "mini-primary?"

[kelipso]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2024/07/21/heres-how-d...

Basically speeches/debates/mini campaign before the convention, and the delegates vote at the convention without regard for the original primary.

[ElevenLathe]

This would just be show anyway. Even with a "real" primary, the DNC's "superdelegate" structure means that party insiders essentially get to choose the candidate, just like in the 19th century (the mythical "smoke filled room").

The primary process itself is just for show, but a competent party would understand that it needs to have at least the appearance of legitimacy.

The last Democratic presidential primary that seemed legitimate to voters who were paying attention was 2008: 2012 was 2nd term Obama, in 2016 insiders ratfucked Sanders to pick Clinton, 2020 they did something similar to pick Biden, and then of course the disaster of 2024.

It's been nearly 20 years since we've had a "real" Democratic primary that at least advertised itself as a democratic process. Seems logical that Democratic voters would be skeptical about the so-called leadership of the party.

[zzrrt]

If this had happened, wouldn’t people say the result was not legitimate because they didn’t win real primaries, the donors easily gamed the mini-primary, etc? Maybe they were screwed as soon as anything unusual happened, and/or some people will find any reason to say Dem insiders play favorites, any reason for Trump to keep “Sleepy Joe” as his opponent.

[kelipso]

The proportions matter and I think much fewer people would be saying the result was not legitimate if it was through some sort of campaign and primary process than an insider decision made through whatever backroom deals they did.

[arrosenberg]

> And as far as I'm aware, that process was followed following Biden's announcement.

This is exactly the problem. The Democratic Party excuse is always "we're following the process". The results suck and then they wring their hands wondering how they lost the election. The goal should be to get power, and getting power requires nominating someone popular. Anyone who has paid attention to US politics for the last decade could have explained just how unpopular Kamala Harris would be.

[shadowgovt]

Pushing too far in that direction results in a Trump wearing a different hat.

The Democrats do follow process. That's one of the key things that makes them Democrats in contrast to the demagoguery and power-at-any-cost approach that seems to have co-opted their colleagues across the aisle. I don't think the kind of people who would vote for a Democratic candidate at all actually want a rule-breaker (and if they do, we got one in the Oval Office right now).

[arrosenberg]

Wrong. We do want someone who will break rules when the rules are there to stop the government from serving its' constituents. So glad they kept the filibuster; so glad they listened to the Senate Parliamentarian; so glad they followed the process and anointed Kamala. Look at where worshipping the process lead.

[pseudalopex]

> Wrong. We do want someone who will break rules when the rules are there to stop the government from serving its' constituents.

Some of you do. Some of you don't. Most of you want of you presidents to obey courts at least.[1]

> So glad they kept the filibuster

In 2013 Democrats eliminated the 60 vote requirement for most nominations. In 2022 all but 2 Democrats voted to eliminate it for some legislation. Who kept it was 100% of Republicans, Sinema, and Manchin.

Some people who sounded like you said Democrats could have and should have blackmailed Sinema and Manchin to get 50 votes. They couldn't explain what would have stopped Sinema or Manchin from defecting to the Republicans.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/majority-americans-believe-...

[arrosenberg]

Courts, sure. Your story is an perfect example of where half-measures led the party, so I’m not sure why you brought that up.

[shadowgovt]

Because once you start breaking rules you don't get to control when it stops.

If we're blackmailing Senators, what do we do when the courts step in to stop it?

Breaking the process leads to a pyrrhic victory. It's France going from guillotining the king to guillotining feminists. If that's one's goal, rejoice! The man in charge right now is the best opportunity since the adoption of America's Constitution in the first place to get there.

ETA: As a side question on this topic: let's assume the Democrats, upon finding that Biden wouldn't be willing to serve, found some way to re-run the primary. We'll magically ignore the massive cost to do so and the fact that it would be illegal to use the voting apparatus of most states in a surprise out-of-band second primary, and we'll magically assume they could organize and pull it off in time for the general election. Who would have come out of that process that would have beaten Trump?

[kelipso]

Do the post-hoc rationalizations matter? Kamala wasn’t elected in a primary and so the perception by many is that she was an illegitimate candidate. That perception translates directly to votes, the justifications for Kamala being the candidate do not.

[zzrrt]

When the choice was between a current VP or an insurrectionist and convicted felon, anyone who thought Harris was less legitimate for candidacy has a funny definition. (I guess I don’t believe in protest votes or third parties in this climate.)

Maybe subconscious feelings made people not bother to get to the polls to vote for her, but I don’t think there’s a sensible conscious argument to ditch her on this basis. In fact, people often say she failed for a reason that is almost an opposite of her unfairly replacing Biden – they say she acted just like him and wouldn’t differentiate herself from him.

I get it was unusual and maybe offensive the way she got nominated, but if a principled voter is going to weigh informal notions of legitimacy, the obvious choice is hold their nose and vote for Harris.

[shadowgovt]

The most rational conclusion after the 2024 election is that most voters are not rational (or, more specifically, "models of their behavior need to prioritize something other than rational-self-interest").

[kelipso]

It would be rewarding bad behavior though. Since there would then be no incentive to stop, voting for Harris would increase the likelihood of the Democrats continuing to skip primaries or promote candidates from within while ignoring their lack of popularity in the primaries.

I don’t believe in voting for the lesser of two evils. It’s a myopic viewpoint that doesn’t take into account long term consequences.

People can rationally look at the long term benefits vs short term risks and rationally vote for Trump. It is extremely hubristic to think that people who don’t agree with you politically are stupid or irrational.

[shadowgovt]

> I don’t believe in voting for the lesser of two evils. It’s a myopic viewpoint that doesn’t take into account long term consequences.

I fail to see that position. There's always a choice between better and worse; even if the choice of better isn't what you want right now, it bends the arrow in the direction where the next choice starts from a better position.

Is your argument that there's a risk of local maxima? Perhaps. But I think it's hubris to imagine that if you bend the arrow down, you'll get to decide who survives the local minima to see whether there's a better maxima after it. That's a choice to put a lot of blood on one's hands.

[kelipso]

Yes, local maxima. You cannot reward a political party when they skip the democratic process and appoint a candidate. If they repeat it again, hopefully they keep losing until they learn their lesson and we get a better set of people who can run the country well.

[shadowgovt]

The issue is that the other side is actual fascism. There is significantly-above-zero threat that the "reward" America will get for getting the Democrats to "learn their lesson" is that they never get to usefully vote for a candidate again.

I would have preferred if the GOP hadn't put actual fascism on the table so that people had meaningful choice over policy (and, indeed, had Trump lost, perhaps it would be the GOP who would've learned their lesson that Americans won't tolerate fascism). But since they did, and America chose the GOP choice, we're now in a situation where the best we can hope for in 2028 is a vote to reject fascism instead of something better.

I don't think that gets us pointed in the right direction, sadly.

(In the larger sphere, the problem is people thinking all they can or should do is vote for President. There's a whole four years and several Congress and state elections in which to do something effective towards desired outcomes, but Americans get very drilled-down on the President only, to their detriment. Half the reason Congress is so sclerotic is most Americans can't be bothered to know who their Congressional reps are, let alone what they stand for).

[zzrrt]

> It would be rewarding bad behavior though. Since there would then be no incentive to stop, voting for Harris would increase the likelihood of the Democrats continuing to skip primaries or promote candidates from within

Speaking of myopia... so a voter considering voting Dem should have thought, "Well, if Biden died today she would become President for awhile anyway, and if he died after winning she would be president for the rest of his term, so she's halfway to being a presidential candidate anyway... but I'm really pissed they didn't re-run the primaries in ways that might not even be legal and would inevitably invite attacks on the legitimacy of the winner, so I'm going to teach them a lesson. I'm so mad I didn't get a chance to have a new-blood lefty or whoever I think is better than Harris but somehow didn't beat Biden, that I'd rather make it more likely for the far-right to win again. I won't vote for someone who disrespects democracy by accepting an unprecedented party nomination, I would rather the winner be the one who disrespects democracy by egging on violent attacks on the capitol, attempting fake elector schemes and pressuring the VP and state governors to throw the election, and violate campaign finance laws. I may be saddling myself and the entire country with a president I don't want, but at least I will have stood my ground stopping Democratic party insiders from upgrading a nearly-nominated VP candidate to Presidential candidate!"

That is the argument that I am saying is stupid and irrational, not being Republican or voting for Trump per se. I just don't see a reasonable, self-consistent argument from "I'd consider a Democrat, but they bent their own rules" to "I should let the non-Democrat who has broken laws win." That's emotion, insistence on following one rule at the expense of all others, and denial of political realities, not logic. And people are free to vote on feelings and perceptions, as I am free to argue they were stupid or irrational if they say this is their reason.

And yeah, some of those accusations against Trump haven't been proven in a court of law, but neither has the idea that Harris was illegitimate.

If you care about Dem ideology etc enough to follow their primaries, you would stick with the party even if they didn't yield exactly the flavor of candidate you prefer, not hang everyone out to dry with a far-right alternative in the generals. If you were content to let the far right win, it doesn't feel like you were truly invested in the Dems anyway, so why should they care how you would have voted in their primary re-run? Again, it's emotionally-driven, this desire or hope to use the party's power to get your candidate onto the ballot, and punish them if they don't do it.

Maybe I should be open to choices other than Trump or Harris, but I feel they're worthless in this climate, and I don't think your premise cares about them either. If you want to vote third party, why care whether one of the two parties followed their nomination rules?

It's also "fun" how Republicans whined about rule-breaking and denying the will of the people in this situation, then a few months later they're entertaining plans like putting up a strawman for president so he can resign and give Trump a third term by succession. (Which as I understand, most lawyers believe is BS, but these days... it might just work.)

[kelipso]

> If you care about Dem ideology etc enough to follow their primaries

I don’t. I follow both primaries because that’s where almost all of the democratic process in the Presidential election happens. Once you have two candidates (third parties are obviously jokes), you get to choose between the two.

So, the primary process is very important to make sure democracy happens and I put a lot of importance in it. As should everyone.

And so, if a candidate does not win through that primary process, that candidate is illegitimate.

[zzrrt]

What is the point of a presidential ballot with only one viable and legitimate candidate? You're just throwing away your choice, because an old man tried to run and then backed out, and his party made possibly the least-impact change they could.

If Biden won and died on day 1 in the office, you'd still end up with "a president who never won the primary" but it wouldn't be the party's fault. Biden stepping down is approximately the same endpoint without dying; is it really logical to blackball the party over a possibility that could have happened accidentally?

Even supposing they legally could have done what you want, they were also legally permitted to do what they did. Harris was a candidate produced by the party following laws and its own procedures. You didn't like the outcome, but that doesn't mean it was not legitimate. Call it undemocratic if you want (though I'm not sure the normal primary process is democratic anyway), but it's legitimate.