Until 1968, presidential candidates were picked by party conventions – a process revived by Biden’s withdrawal from race

Problem is, there is zero time for another primary to gauge who is the general public currently wants the most at this moment in time. All we really have is the last general election as the last real moment that the general public picked their heads of the DNC. Since Biden / Harris are incumbents, and challenging a presidential incumbent is rare AF, they didn’t really have a primary.

IMHO, if you want to respect the voters, you kind of need to pretend that Biden has been incapacitated and Harris is being called up from his bench.

And on top of that, she’s already on the ballots, already has the war chest of campaign cash, etc. Strategically, she is going to have the best shot. State GOP folks will have a hard time blocking her from ballot, and she can immediately start a well funded ground campaign. No one else can really do that.

They'll listen to their wealthiest donors before the rest of us.

So are you suggesting Dean Phillips (the biggest non-Biden vote getter in the primary) or Jason Palmer (the only person other than Biden to win a primary, with American Samoa) should be the nominee?

I hope the lesson they learn this time is to have a primary EVERY time. Don’t just assume the incumbent is the candidate.

Biden got more votes than Bernie.

And Bernie did better in cuacus states, where the DNC would have been able to weild more influence.

sHe'S eLeCtAbLe If YoU vOtE fOr HeR

Bingo. Nonetheless, in 1968 the convention chose the candidate.

Yeah, you might be right. There is a front page article that talks about how exactly that used to be the way that we did it. And I do very much like the idea of having a genuine marketplace of candidates. We already paid the heavy heavy fuckin price of taking the incumbent away, we might as well do everything possible to make sure the replacement is going to be the definitely strongest candidate. But you may have a point.

Harris is fine. She's a functional adult and doesn't want to destroy the world, and she's apparently sharp on her feet. So three points in her favor. I'm slightly worried about "fine" being the only real metric, but sure... I mean I won't say you are certainly wrong about your way of looking at it.

I don’t know, it could probably work, America is the outlier for their election seasons. UK elections are held 5-6 weeks after Parliament is dissolved. The 2022 French Presidential election was held less than 2 weeks after the polling date was announced. Comparatively, the USA’s 7 months to convention, 10 months to election is a lifetime. You can do loads in 106 days

106 days? Both England and France held full elections in less than that amount of time. I knew of Biden's withdrawal 20mins after it happened. Trump getting shot at a week ago is already old news.

You can do A LOT of politics, especially in the US of A, in 106 days.

If Kamala is the choice she better come out swinging and laugh Trump out of this race. If she isn't ready then I want someone else. Trump is an old liar who fumbles constantly and holds garbage opinions. I want to see him shut the hell up.

People were saying the same shit about Biden dropping out up to the minute he did it.

And after a $50mm fundraising day, I just have a really hard time seeing it end up as anyone else.

I don't like that it's the case, but at this point it's probably over 90% odds that it's going to be Harris.

This is true. If she's going to get endorsements to what amounts to be the whole party, then the convention will be predetermined. The only item is the running mate. I would go for Big Gretch.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/crime-lab-scandal-rocked-kamala-harriss-term-as-san-francisco-district-attorney/2019/03/06/825df094-392b-11e9-a06c-3ec8ed509d15_story.html