If Joe had quit when he said he would, they maybe could have chosen someone better through a primary process, but not clear to me that anyone plausible would have beaten Trump. Plus, getting rid of the black woman VP might have hurt their results with blacks and women even worse. They seem to me to be screwed. It’s a coalition party with no real message other than “spend money and give it to the members of our coalition” and that’s not really where the mood of the country is after going through that bout of inflation. Who do they have? D-bag from California who delivers no states they don’t have and comes across like a car salesman, the gay guy who is pretty smart but has a dang husband and the country is not ready for that, or the Jewish guy from PA, who may be the best bet, but again, is the Dem coalition ready for a Jewish moderate who supports Israel? Screwed.
Your right in that they _currently_ have no good candidates at this time. At all. Unfortunately, that won’t always be the case going forward.
Trump needs to give Vance on-the-job training (i.e., not just a ‘break glass in case of emergency’) stint as VP so that he’s fully ready in 2028. The elections have still been too close to risk seeing the Dems coming up with some bright new charismatic face (think Bill Clinton or Obama) who the sheeple would vote for just because of the persona.
At some point, someone on the Left is going to figure out that their messages don’t sell... so they will get somebody suitable to speak the middle ground loudly ... until after getting elected.
We’ll know this is happening when some Democrat starts speaking against his party and the media leaves him alone to continue the ruse.