[conservatism_IS_compassion]

You think you vote for president? You don’t - you vote for a slate of Electors who are committed to vote for your candidate for POTUS. Therefore, the only issue is that the Dems might have to get their voters to vote for “Hillary” as a figurehead. But they still face the issue of campaigning for those electors - and thus they have to convince their voters that the electors will vote for someone the voters like.

[shhrubbery!]

Yes you're right. I am just saying that it in the event something catastrophic happened to a candidate at the top of the ticket, it could be hard to motivate that candidate's voters to still go out and vote.

We know that many voters base their votes on the candidate's perceived personality; and if that personality is gone from the race, for whatever reason, there's a good chance his or her voters will stay home.