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Comment by brandur | Hacker News Reader

The point is that Democratic voters didn't get a chance to have their voice heard. Conducting polling is post-hoc rationalization for Harris being installed by party leaders in unprecedentedly anti-democratic action.

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The purpose of a primary is to help the party pick a nominee that has a better chance of winning the general, which is, in turn, the purpose of a political party. The mechanism of binding primaries was set up by party leaders after some bad choices (especially in the 1968 Democratic Convention). This time, the prospective candidates decided that a blitz primary wouldn't serve its purpose. If the voters punish them for this decision, then it will have proved a bad one, but it's neither unprecedented nor undemocratic.

If the presidential candidate wishes to hand the reins over to his vice president, why is he not allowed to do that?

He is allowed, it's just doesn't follow a democratic process.

But this is part of the democratic process. If the presidential candidate died a week before election and the VP took his place, we would not be discussing the situation as undemocratic.

When I say democratic, I don't mean the Democratic party's primary process, I mean a process by which people vote to select a leader.

Yes I agree that Joe Biden had the legal authority to step down and appoint Kamala Harris as his successor to run for President. No, I don't think doing that is democratic. What would have followed the democratic process would have been recognize what everyone else knew way in advance and stepping down early enough for potential nominees to run to be the candidate.

There is no way they could have held a second primary in the 28 days between Biden dropping out and the DNC. Polls said Democrats wanted Biden to drop out, Democrats had already elected Harris once, and polls said Democrats were happy with Harris as the nominee. That's about as democratic as you could get given the situation.

Criticizing the Democrats for being anti-democratic here would carry a lot more weight if the Republican nominee wasn't responsible for J6 and the fake electors plot.

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