You can't use 2024 as an example, that was the sole outlier of an election, and did not represent anybody's best wishes.

You act like they did it out of pure contempt for the voters, without addressing the fact that the Democratic campaign became a 3 alarm fire after the debate. Biden was a mess, far more than we knew, and it was clear he was unfit to serve another term, even if it was due to the poor excuse of a cold and medication. I've lived with someone who passed from dementia, and there was no doubt in my mind what I was witnessing that night. It was shocking, and something had to be done.

With only a few months before the General Election, it would have been impossible to put together a nationwide primary with multiple candidates. Anyone who thinks that would have been possible, has no idea what goes into holding an election, especially a national Presidential election in 50 states. In the time frame you want candidates to decide, raise money, and campaign, while simultaneously the election teams that have been organizing the Presidential Election now have to split off valuable workers, to operate this emergency primary, mere months before the actual PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

How can anyone possibly think that would go well for anyone, and not be a monumental disaster of historical proportions?

OTOH, we have a Vice-President, next in line anyway, and if he steps down, she steps in, and we're doing a re-election campaign. The only problem was that nobody wanted to have the hard talk with him (and his family, they always said, because yeah, it's clear he can't handle this on his own), or to 25th Amendment the venerable old guy, even though his condition was EXACTLY what it was meant to handle.

And it wasn't like anyone could make a credible case that she wasn't a viable nominee anyway. She wasn't a Sarah Palin by any stretch of the imagination. There were all these comparisons to her past primary, as if she didn't just spent the last 4 years at the very top levels of power. In anyone else's job, how much stronger would they be if they spent four years working with the top people in their industry? Nobody would question it. In a primary, especially a chaotic emergency one, it's a pretty good bet that she would have won anyway.

So it was essentially a re-election campaign for the (v)P, with just that pesky resignation step missing, because they were either too polite to press the issue (so common for weak Dems), or he was too stubborn to quit, which would be a common trait for dementia, believe me.

Most people recognized that at the time, and that's why we accepted her with open arms. Lest you forget, she raised an enormous amount of money in the next 24 hours, and even more beyond that. I happened to go to a corporate event the next day, with a lot of lesbians in attendance, and they were practically giddy with joy.

The idea that people opposed this oppressive edict from the DNC is greatly overblown. It wasnt the ideal situation, but Harris was a reasonable choice under the extreme emergency circumstances.

There were a lot of other factors that came into play, like MAGA voter fraud, Biden's enthusiastic support of genocide, etc.