They learned the wrong lesson from 2016 and Bernie/Hillary. They knew the candidate they wanted, and didn’t even need to maintain the pretense of democracy, so just ran effectively one candidate, failing to consider that the more popular candidate than Hillary was more popular for a reason, and so in this cycle any other candidate would have looked amazing next to Biden, who again they already knew they wanted to run.
Obama didn’t have a real primary challenger either, or Clinton before him. There’s nothing unusual about an incumbent president not being challenged. Where they fucked up was treating it as business as usual when the president’s age was such a big risk.
There’s nothing unusual about it, but it’s still a bad system. Primaries are about both finding the most actually popular nominee (which may or may not have changed), but also seeing the level of actual voter support for different issues based on the candidates pushing for them, which allows other candidates to adopt or shift towards those positions themselves.
Sadly, Biden would very possibly have won even in a crowded primary field, but he’d have gotten absolutely trounced on a bunch of issues he falsely claims he has ‘silent majority’ support for, like Gaza.
They learned the wrong lesson from 2016 and Bernie/Hillary. They knew the candidate they wanted, and didn’t even need to maintain the pretense of democracy, so just ran effectively one candidate, failing to consider that the more popular candidate than Hillary was more popular for a reason, and so in this cycle any other candidate would have looked amazing next to Biden, who again they already knew they wanted to run.
Obama didn’t have a real primary challenger either, or Clinton before him. There’s nothing unusual about an incumbent president not being challenged. Where they fucked up was treating it as business as usual when the president’s age was such a big risk.
There’s nothing unusual about it, but it’s still a bad system. Primaries are about both finding the most actually popular nominee (which may or may not have changed), but also seeing the level of actual voter support for different issues based on the candidates pushing for them, which allows other candidates to adopt or shift towards those positions themselves.
Sadly, Biden would very possibly have won even in a crowded primary field, but he’d have gotten absolutely trounced on a bunch of issues he falsely claims he has ‘silent majority’ support for, like Gaza.