So the experiment I mused on here did not quite go as some folks might’ve hoped. “They” decided that Vice President Harris should inherit the nomination instead of having a contested convention. Since defeat is an orphan, we may never know if “They” were Democratic Party leaders and donors writ large or if “They” were Kamala and her team, maneuvering as quickly as possible to get Biden’s support and be handed the nomination. If I had to bet, I’d bet that it was both in real life, but we’ll all pretend it was the latter so that any machine bigwigs not named “Kamala” can save face.

Right now I think the best explanation for Trump’s victory is that over 60% of voters think we’re on the wrong track. When you’re on the wrong track, you change things up. Maybe further analysis, after more data’s been processed and the passions have cooled, will reveal otherwise.

The Democrats’ biggest mistake, both politically and in terms of governing the country (which is sort of the point of presidential elections), was not invoking the 25th Amendment ages ago. I’m not sure what their war-gaming said about leaving Biden in the White House while having Harris run. But absurdly pretending that the guy who obviously couldn’t handle a campaign was somehow still capable of running the federal government didn’t help. It made them look [Note: The editors and sponsors intervened and forced me to replace my original litany of invective with the following] bad. We’ll never know whether it was the least bad plan, but it just plain didn’t work.

Now, if they had 25th-Amendment-ed him, we would have been spared that particular absurdity. By the way, I’m still on board, like I was back in June, with Kamala replacing Joe right now. It might look gimmicky at this point, it might look like they’re doing it for the novelty, but I don’t care– it has the virtue of being the responsible and sane thing to do.

I am now done ranting about that, and I’ve run out of italics anyways. Back to the experiment part.

I still think taking longer to decide your nominee might work. Having later campaigns and caucuses and primaries might pay off. The relative lateness of Harris becoming the nominee was not the problem (but a lot more people should be a lot angrier about not yanking Joe a lot sooner). I don’t think the Harris campaign suffered from “not having enough time to introduce her to the voting public.” Money certainly wasn’t the problem, even if the campaign ended up in a little bit of debt.

Nothing in this election cycle convinced me that pushing campaigns, primaries, conventions, etc. closer to Election Day would hurt either side. So I dare the Ds and Rs to do so. No primaries until, say, May of 2028. Have the conventions back-to-back in the two weeks leading up to Labor Day. Two-month sprint, then election, then done.

Very tired. More later.