Back in the spring, I had a long conversation with my father (a lifelong Democrat whose only vote in a presidential contest that wasn't for the Democrat candidate was for John Anderson in 1980) about Biden's chances against Trump. He insisted that Biden made the right choice to run because nobody else seemed like they would have a good chance against him, but I argued that this was because Biden choosing to run again essentially made it impossible for anyone else to make a serious attempt at it, and that the best thing would have been for him to announce within the first couple years of his term that he wouldn't be running for reelection, which would have given other candidates a chance to make a case. I still think that I was right about this; anyone competent enough to be a worthy candidate in the general election would know that they'd have no chance at winning the nomination against Biden running as an incumbent, even if they'd have a better chance at winning the general election. Anyone reasonable who was concerned with Trump winning had no incentive to enter a contest they couldn't win and risk being perceived (perhaps correctly) as a spoiler who hurt Biden's chances, so the smartest thing for them to do both for themselves and the country would be to hide their ambitions until next time and hope for the best.
I know that I've probably been wrong ten times for every time that I've been right about something like this, but that didn't make it any easier to watch the last six or seven months. You're correct that there was nothing else anyone could have done to avoid the train wreck by the time Biden withdrew because the only way to avert it would have been to change speeds way back before we got to the sharp curve. The worst part is that I don't even think that Harris would have necessarily been a bad candidate if she had been given a proper chance from the start; there are articles as far back as early 2022 mentioning that her public appeal was hurt by the Biden administration tying her to issues like immigration and election reform. At minimum, ignoring the harm to her future electability showed extremely poor foresight, and it's not hard to imagine that it went beyond negligence to the point of outright sabotage of someone viewed as a potential threat.
It’s very unlikely that he would deliberately kneecap her. But I agree with you…that it was too late by the time he dropped out, the electorate had already made its mind.
In the end, I think his policies turned out to be great. But he didn’t have the skills to capitalize on the gains, to seize them and point to them as “wins”. Instead we often saw a somewhat slow, very old but good natured grandpa who was clearly not fully present all the time.
The policy on Gaza though, that made 0 sense. He had the power to bully Netanyahu into stepping back but consistently took no action. Solving that crisis would have been HUGE for reelection, keeping them festering only contributed to the feeling of chaos.
I know that I've probably been wrong ten times for every time that I've been right about something like this, but that didn't make it any easier to watch the last six or seven months. You're correct that there was nothing else anyone could have done to avoid the train wreck by the time Biden withdrew because the only way to avert it would have been to change speeds way back before we got to the sharp curve. The worst part is that I don't even think that Harris would have necessarily been a bad candidate if she had been given a proper chance from the start; there are articles as far back as early 2022 mentioning that her public appeal was hurt by the Biden administration tying her to issues like immigration and election reform. At minimum, ignoring the harm to her future electability showed extremely poor foresight, and it's not hard to imagine that it went beyond negligence to the point of outright sabotage of someone viewed as a potential threat.