I linked and excerpted this Jason Willick column in another thread. But I'll do so again here, because it seems appropriate in response to what you're saying.
The proposition that Kamala D. Harris is the Democratic candidate best suited to defeat
Donald Trump is about as believable as the proposition that
Joe Biden was mentally and physically equipped to serve as president until 2029.
That is to say: Both are obvious fictions. Democrats coalesced around the fiction of Biden’s acuity during the primary season. Now that Biden has dropped out, they are adopting the fiction that “
no one is better” (as California Gov. Gavin Newsom put it on Sunday) to take on Trump in Biden’s stead. Any prospect of a competitive nomination process is evaporating as Democratic politicians — even those previously mooted as possible Biden replacements should he step aside — stampede to Harris.
Does anyone really believe Harris is the Democratic candidate most likely to block another Trump term? Unable to conceal Biden’s infirmity any longer, panicked Democratic leaders forced the president out of the 2024 race. They have a chance to put forward a strong candidate in a high-stakes election that is likely to be close. If they swiftly coronate Harris, Democrats would be elevating one of the weakest candidates available.
Thing is: I honestly don't have much problem with the *manner* in which they've coalesced around Harris. Yeah, I get that it opens them up to (rather flimsy) charges of hypocrisy on the issue of "protecting democracy." But, to me, it's a minor thing. The circumstances are what they are. And it seems a foregone conclusion that doing anything to leapfrog Harris at this point would only be pouring fuel on a fire they urgently needed to extinguish.
But Willick hits on what is, to me, a much more important point: that Harris really isn't a great candidate, there are better ones available, but they're going to have to pretend once again that what is apparent to most objective people is, in fact, not even true at all.
Before it was that, despite what we all saw on TV for months (if not years), Biden wasn't having cognitive issues at all. It was merely a stutter. And now it's that Harris was the first and best choice -- not simply the most convenient one. It's like when a basketball program hires their 3rd or 4th choice for a new coach...and insists that he was the only one they ever even offered.
Of course, Harris could go on to win the election -- in which case it will be people like Willick wiping egg from their faces. But, if she doesn't, then the post-mortems on this cycle among Democrats are almost certainly going to involve a lot of finger-pointing over what's been happening the past several days.