Harris was an extremely weak, flawed candidate - one that was out of touch with the majority of concerns Americans had/have.  "Turning the page" didn't resonate with people, as she had been in power for the past four years, and didn't distance herself from Biden.  "Joy" was a meaningless slogan.  The media turned her into some kind of rock star, but she wasn't.  No one picked her either - the party leaders did.  I'm surprised anyone thought she could win.

So the same Democrats that supposedly stole the last (ultra-audited) election while out of the White House couldn't be bothered to steal this one when they were in power?

The other side did the same thing, to be fair. 

Musk and his acolytes were ranting non-stop that this could be the last "fair" election and Kamala will turn every state into California for the next one.

Everything is "extreme" now.

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My take: it was mostly Biden that blew it.

They forced his candidacy last time when it should've been Bernie.

Then he tried to stay as the candidate for this one (when he had said before he would be a one term President) and only stepped down after crashing and burning in the debate, giving no time to find a legitimate substitute.

With hindsight, what ended up happening was completely obvious but everybody was too busy cheerleading their favorite to wake up.

  

How do you mean that, Mark?

That's part of my point. Trump was an enormously flawed candidate, but he still beat her.  And not just with his base.  As you said, in this election his performance improved among almost all demographic groups.

In just my state, the fact that the ballot initiative to create a constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion rights overwhelmingly passed, and Dems won the congressional and senate seats (except for one popular Republican incumbent in northern Nevada) is evidence that some people voted for Trump who otherwise had liberal political leanings.  Why did she fail to get those votes?

"But before we can agree that she was objectively 'extraordinarily weak' there ought to be at least one objectively true statement you can make to distinguish her from all the real life actual potential candidates who would have been so much better..."

Fair enough.  I wasn't suggesting she is objectively weak...just stating my own opinion.  But I think its objectively true that she was tremendously unsuccessful when she ran in 2020.  Under normal circumstances I don't believe she would have been capable of securing the Democratic nomination.  And I don't see anything from her tenure as VP that makes her a substantially better candidate than she was in 2020.

This election was successfully framed about whether people felt like they were better off now then they were four years ago, and who was responsible for it. The electorate overwhelmingly said they felt they were not, better off, and that the incumbent party caused their problems, or didn't do enough to prevent or correct them. 

People in that mood assume that staying the course is the one thing NOT to do, anything else could only be better. Any candidate would have had an uphill battle under those circumstances. 

Again, broken record here, but there needs to be some actual effort actually addressing the problems these people are having and doing a better job of communicating to them what they are doing AS they are doing it, instead of waiting to play catch up every couple of years to explain something that can't fit in a sound bite. 

As the hard work that has been done over the past few years only now comes to fruition, Trump and the Republicans will take credit for that too, same as he did in his first term, and the cycle will continue.

This nation got the government it deserves.

-C!

No.  I think the majority of voters didn't see Harris the way you do.