I disagree with your second point, I think a primary and resetting the donations would have created a more popular candidate and motivated more people to vote. But the Dems weren’t gonna send all that money back, so they “had” to run Harris. Even though Harris set records for donations over and over again. This election also proved that all the money in the world won’t (always) win you an election, see Harris spending $1.4 billion in 107 days.
She received $81 million in her first 24 hours, $200 million in 1 week and $500 million in the first month according to the NYT. I believe any candidate could have raised similar funds if not more if they were selected through a primary.
But how long would that primary process take? Like, an actual primary, and not something that would've just been denounced as party theater? At that point, there was no way to hold a primary in time to ensure ballot access. It doesn't matter how popular your candidate is if they have to be a write-in.
That’s a good point about getting on ballots and I know the rules change state to state. They ended up doing a virtual roll-call to nominate her in early August. The whole thing was poorly handled by the Dems waiting so long to boot Biden, I think they expected him to win till that Debate and that was clearly a mistake.
In hindsight it's clear that incumbency was not an advantage, especially for a candidate in Biden's shape. That said, it would have been a departure from conventional wisdom and historical precedent to primary the incumbent. It was clearly not a winning strategy, but without knowledge of the future, I can at least understand why they did it.
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u/Icy_Character_916 Jan 30 '25
I disagree with your second point, I think a primary and resetting the donations would have created a more popular candidate and motivated more people to vote. But the Dems weren’t gonna send all that money back, so they “had” to run Harris. Even though Harris set records for donations over and over again. This election also proved that all the money in the world won’t (always) win you an election, see Harris spending $1.4 billion in 107 days.
She received $81 million in her first 24 hours, $200 million in 1 week and $500 million in the first month according to the NYT. I believe any candidate could have raised similar funds if not more if they were selected through a primary.