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Harris was the vice president, and was therefore the closest thing to a small-d democratic choice amongst the available options. Otherwise... Why Harris and not Newsom?

The better choice would have been Biden stepping out earlier and having a real primary, of course.

That’s why Biden should have picked a vice presidential candidate who could run a good campaign in 2024. It’s not like Biden’s age was an unknown factor. Biden himself floated the idea of only running for one term back in 2020.

Agreed. If the incumbent doesn't run (term limited or retires), the next nominee is almost always the VP if they want the job. Just look at the history:

  Roosevelt -> Truman
  (not Truman -> Barkley: the exception)
  Eisenhower -> Nixon
  Johnson -> Humphrey
  Nixon -> Ford
  Reagan -> Bush
  Clinton -> Gore
  (not Bush -> Cheney, who retired)
  (not Obama -> Biden, who temporarily retired)
  Biden -> Harris

I can't fathom how a party can pick a VP who isn't an excellent future candidate. JD Vance?

> JD Vance?

JD wasn’t picked for having the best chances of winning in 2028. He was picked to cement MAGA within the GOP after Trump dies.

> the smart choice was to nominate Elizabeth Warren, who is a fantastic campaigner. But Harris was the choice to appease the identity activists.

That's the reverse: Warren wasn't nominated because she's progressive and beloved by people who care most about diversity.

The centrist Dems supported Harris - Biden's VP - and hate progressives more than they hate Republicans (they do everything to show how they work with Republicans) - look at the NYC mayoral race, where the Dem candidate was opposed or not supported by many Dem leaders.

> Warren wasn't nominated because she's progressive and beloved by people who care most about diversity.

No, look at Warren’s performance on Super Tuesday, which includes many of the states with the largest minority populations. 79% of Warren voters were white, in an electorate (Democrats in places like Texas and South Carolina) that’s majority non-white: https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/c_fill,g_aut...

However, nominating Warren as the VP would have fixed that problem. Racial conflict plays a large role within internal Democratic politics. However, the non-white factions will usually line up behind the selected candidate in the general election.

You're right about her support, but white progressives are generally the biggest advocates of Diversity. IME minority groups are generally more conservative than progressives are (though of course we're talking about tens of millions of people each with their own opinions) and care about how they are treated but less about Diversity as a solution, but of course most won't consider Republicans for obvious reasons.

> white progressives are generally the biggest advocates of diversity. IME minority groups are generally more conservative than progressives

I think you're correct about all that. But you overlook that minority groups care about "diversity" for other, different reasons. Generally speaking, minority groups care about it as a show of commitment to their group. Jim Clyburn was instrumental in Harris's nomination. He isn't a progressive. But he cares a lot that the party appoints black people to key positions.

That's just how the party has long worked. For decades, Catholic immigrants voted for Democrats as a bloc and in return Democrats delivered political benefits to Catholics and appointed Catholics to key positions. Minority groups today aren't any different. Myriad ethnic activist groups are in different communities--Muslims in Queens, Latinos in Nevada, etc.--mobilizing those communities to vote Democrat. And those organizations deeply care about the party delivering key appointments to members of their group.

So you're correct that Elizabeth Warren was the candidate favored by progressives who value diversity as an abstract ideological principle. But she was not favored by the groups that help deliver actual votes from minority voters and wanted the appointment of someone from their group in return for that support.

> the smart choice was to nominate Elizabeth Warren, who is a fantastic campaigner. But Harris was the choice to appease the identity activists. They killed Dems’ chances in 2024 even before Biden’s term began.

And back when we had an actual primary (rigged, with an overcrowded field), Warren was the choice to appease the 'progressive' identity activists who attempted, with the help of Warren, to tar & feather Bernie as an old white misogynist. They all pretended to have some knock-off version of Medicare For All because it polled so well, only to rugpull the concept as soon as Bernie was booted out.

Dems know how to win, but it's against capital's wishes, so they obey accordingly as controlled opposition via illusory democracy and choice.

> identity activists who attempted, with the help of Warren, to tar & feather Bernie as an old white misogynist

Yes, and I think that error had profound consequences. Democrats got so drunk on “demographics is destiny” they thought it was a good idea to shoot at their own side as long as the targets were “old white guys” and “Bernie bros.” For every white guy that left the party, two brown guys and girls would replace them.

That left them completely unprepared for an electoral environment where Trump made huge inroads with minorities and won half of foreign born voters: https://data.blueroseresearch.org/hubfs/2024%20Blue%20Rose%2... (see pp. 7 and 9).

The point though is the error was intentional.

Democrats, as controlled opposition, intentionally lose in certain scenarios. FFS, they propped up Trump during his first run with their Pied Piper strategy which elevated him from meme-tier gameshow host to frontrunner, as exposed by wikileaks.

Republicans of course are no better. It's a carefully tuned machine of good cop / bad cop, and enough people fall for it to keep the illusion of democracy afloat.

What we functionally have is a uniparty of capital interests which depends on "idpol" types of division and distraction.

All of the progressives combined were putting up lower numbers than Biden alone in several states, and Biden and moderates combined in nearly every state. It wasn't "rigged" and progressives convincing themselves that it was is MAGA-style revisionism.

I also have to admire the irony of Bernie supporters acting entitled to a coronation / noncompetitive primary after the kinds of things they said in 2016.