COVID took Donald Trump out of the White House, and then, four years later, COVID put him back in. The shocks caused by the pandemic have produced generational inflation on a global scale that has wreaked havoc on incumbents in country after country. Increases in the cost of living have fostered an economy that most people believe it didn’t work for them. This was an election in which the basic indicators were that the bums would be kicked out. That’s what they were.

Given the scale of Donald Trump’s victory, it would therefore be foolish to go too far into the abyss of bad tactical decisions taken here, of inaccurate positions on this issue. The map wasn’t what it was because Kamala Harris chose Tim Walz over Josh Shapiro as her vice presidential candidate, either because she was too supportive or not supportive enough of Israel’s war on Gaza, or because she spent too much time with Liz Cheney. The environment was the environment, and it’s difficult to place total responsibility on any one choice or person.

With that said, let’s talk about President Joe Biden.

The country decided years ago that Biden was too infirm to run for a second term. In June 2022, a New York Times Poll showed that only 26 percent of Democrats thought it should be renamed, and their main concern was its age and visible decline. The idea that this person, who the public also disapproved of for a while, variety of policy reasons-could serve as president until 2029 seemed absurd at first glance to the country.

Biden and the Democrats, however, learned the wrong lesson from the 2022 midterm elections. Somehow, the Democrats’ better-than-expected performance was interpreted at the White House as a vote of confidence in Bideneven though he had nothing to do with it. The Democratic coalition had won over more of the high-propensity, college-educated voters who always show up in midterms, while the Republican coalition had become more irregular. The Supreme Court had, a few months earlier, stripped an entire sex of the constitutional right to control their body. January 6 was even fresher in voters’ minds, and Trump had worked diligently to ensure that Republicans named conspirators in every decisive election. They didn’t get far without Trump getting on the ballot to encourage participation.

But the party wrongly took the midterm performance as a sign that Biden should be retained as its nominee. It would take over a year and a half, and a shocking change late in the game debacle of the debatefor Biden and the party to accept that his candidacy was untenable.

Biden endorsed his vice president and the party quickly fell in line. Maybe it was still the right decision that late point. The campaign machinery could be quickly transferred to another party member, and Harris already had – for better or worse – some experience tested in the spotlight of national politics.

Your mileage may vary, but I have a hard time being too angry with Harris. She found herself in an impossible situation: facing extraordinary economic and border headwinds and inheriting the administration’s unpopularity without having been the decision-maker. Having to define herself – and avoid being defined by Trump – in 90 days. Staying loyal to Biden while trying to keep your distance. Having to bear the weight of the future of the world on his shoulders. And having to persuade a country that has never elected a black woman as president, or a woman at all, to elect her. You can’t blame him for not trying.

And yet her limitations as a politician have been exposed, just as they were during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. She is too cautious, too poll-driven, too mercenary. There’s too much advice in her head and no one really knows who she is or what she wants.

These limitations are things that are useful to expose in a year-long presidential primary. There I was thinkingafter the Democrats changed nominees over the summer, when Harris was in great shape, that avoiding a complicated primary altogether could be a model for the parties in the future, to the extent that they could get away with it. Even if the Democrats’ situation in 2024 were repeatable, which it is not, I would say that this argument has been categorically refuted. Harris may not have won a year-long primary against the best candidates the Democratic Party had to offer — or maybe she did, because she could have gotten sharper over the course of this process. Democrats could have become sharper during this process.

But it is a process that the Democrats have not allowed themselves to do because, despite deafening chorus public that Biden should not run for a second term, he did. Biden was certain to lose, and his replacement by Harris at the top of the ticket gave Democrats at most a chance. It was a Hail Mary. Despite what you may be seen latelythese usually don’t work.

Democrats will spend the next few years figuring out what went wrong and how to rebuild. We all look forward to this tedious process. But you want to know a little secret? They probably won’t change much and they might get away with it. Trump will make a mess of things once he returns to office, and the (probably) unified Republican Congress will spend money to cut Medicaid and cut taxes on the rich, setting up Democrats for a midterm improvement. Democrats will hold open primaries with star governors in 2028, and Republicans will nominate someone who doesn’t have that special something Trump has to activate new voters. Since I started covering politics in 2007, I’ve seen the Republican Party declared dead (2008), the Republican Party declared dead (2016, after Trump’s nomination), the Democratic Party declared dead (2016, after Trump’s victory), the Republican Party declared dead (2020), and now the Democratic Party declared dead (2024). Maybe this one will last. Probably not.

But Democrats would do well to nominate someone who can serve for eight years. And beware of these pandemic-induced supplies shocks.

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