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Non-fringe challengers to incumbent Presidents from within their own party are rare since (1) they are essentially guaranteed to lose the nonination contest, (2) they weaken the party in the general, and (3) running such a campaign (because of #2) burns bridges in the party for the candidate for a future run that isn’t against an in-party incumbent.

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If you think about it, you're telling me that detailed intelligent assessment of the situation is irrelevant, as the party behaves according to a basic, short list of absolute rules, which are considered non-negotiable, can't be questioned, and have no chance of being broken.

In essence, the party is stupid. Both are, obviously.

And... this is exactly the problem. People together are supposed to be greater than the sum of us. But we see exactly the opposite. We discard our intelligence in favor of much simpler institutional and cultural algorithms, which fail us repeatedly. Extremely frustrating.

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