The reason it is a terrible idea for the incumbent party to have a divisive primary

[Hardkill]

I now know why it is usually a suicidal idea for the incumbent party holding the White House to have a divisive primary/contest for its party's presidential nomination. This probably applies to other kinds of races such as gubernatorial elections, congressional or senatorial elections, state legislative elections, and mayoral elections. 

The reason why the incumbent party gets terribly hurt electorally by having such a bloody, miserable primary is because by allowing that to happen it negatively influences the electorate to question the governance of the party in power to such a severe degree. I would say this would be especially true in this current day and age given how divided our country has gotten these days.

Having a highly contested primary for the party out of power, in contrast, doesn't hurt the challenger nominee/challenger party because they haven't even had the chance to govern yet as the president or as a current officeholder of some part of the US government. So, how can a challenging candidate or the party out of power really ever be questioned or judged as much as the incumbent can be about running the country in some way? So, actually for the party out of power or challenger candidate(s) having such a heated contest can provide much media coverage for several candidates in the race, whereby each of them would have an opportunity to persuade the people as to why the current form of governance is maybe not working or why the president has perhaps failed the country or why the current officeholder of say a governorship or US Senate seat has possibly failed its constituents.

 

Go straight to time 52:22, if clicking on the vid doesn't take you right to the question I asked the Professor pertaining to this subject and his answer to it.

 

I brought this up because I know many people in the US have been urging Biden to drop to clear the field for the younger generation of talented Democratic stars such as Newsom, Whitmer, Shapiro, Beshear, Brown, Warnock, and so on and so on to fight for 2024 Democratic Nomination for president. Yet, I now realize for sure what a grave mistake that would've been not just for the entire Democratic party to do that, but also for the whole country. This now really reaffirms my belief that Biden has made the wise decision for both his party and the country to run for president again to stop Trump from ever coming back to the White House.

We don't want to have a repeat of what happened in 1968:

• LBJ decided not to run for president. Consequently, Democrats lost the incumbency advantage.
• The party in power, which was the Democratic party at the time, had a brutal and chaotic primary for the Dem presidential nomination. Democrats were heavily divided, which caused most Americans to greatly question the Democrats' ability to run the country.
• The racist segregationist Dixiecrat (Southern Democrat) George Wallace further ran as a major 3rd party presidential candidate. That of course meant that that he became a major spoiler for the Democrats in the general presidential election. 
• The Democrats failed to nominate either a once in generation charismatic presidential candidate or a once or twice in a century inspirational heroic war leader after Johnson declined to run for re-election.  

Now, just to be clear those weren't the only reasons as to why the Dems lost the 1968 presidential election. The other key factors that caused them to lose were

• The terrible midterm results that the Dems had in 1966, particularly with the US House seats they lost. 
• The historic widespread social unrest that occurred at the time over the Vietnam war and nationwide racial riots. (Cost the Dems the social unrest key)
• Johnson's disastrous handling of the Vietnam War. (Cost the Dems both the military/foreign policy failure and the military/foreign policy success key)

All together these factors ultimately became the death knell for the Democrats in the 1968 presidential election even though during Johnson's second term the economy was doing great all around and Johnson's policies were as transformational for the country as FDR's New Deal policies were. The Republican presidential nominee ultimately won that election and guess who that GOP nominee was? Nixon!

By the way, It's really not clear at all that Newsom or any of these rising young star Democrats out there would be able to win that key for the party today. Bill Clinton himself never won that key for his party during each of his presidential runs because he was only charismatic to the Democratic/liberal base and to barely the majority of Independent/moderate (swing voters). To win that key you would have to be so exceptionally charismatic, that you not only generate such devotion and love from your party base, you also would have to be able to win a solid majority of Independent/moderate voters, and win over an unusually high percentage of those from the party/ideology that's the opposite of what that presidential candidate is for.

Since 1860, only seven presidents in US history were truly able to achieve this include: Ulysses S. Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Dwight Eisenhower, JFK, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama. Also, given how incredibly polarized our country has gotten it has become that much more difficult for either major party to put up a presidential candidate who would be able to inspire or persuade such a broad political spectrum of voters. Moreover, there isn't anyone out there today who would constitute as an exceptional heroic war leader like Eisenhower or Grant who could run as the Democratic nominee for president. So, I would say that it would be extremely unlikely in this day and age that the Democratic party would be able to find anyone who could the charisma/national hero key for their key. That's another why I say that it's really not worth it for Biden to step aside. 

It's clear to me at this point that no Democratic star out there like Newsom, Shapiro, Whitmer, Moore, or Beshear is going to save us from Trump and the MAGA Republicans. In fact, all of those big name Dems have made it clear that they too have given their full throated support to Biden and have been working very hard to promote him and his administration as much as possible. Not even the OG legend Obama himself can save our county and he too has made it very clear that he and his entire network of important people he has been well connected with are doing everything they can to help the Biden-Harris ticket win in 2024. Every other Democratic campaign strategist/operative has or will fall in line behind Biden as well for the big election. Therefore, it's actually up to EACH ONE OF US or ALL OF US as the voters of the USA to UNITE TOGETHER as much as possible under Biden and to GET OUT THERE AND VOTE FOR HIM and the Democratic party in historic numbers once again to truly save this country from Trumpism in 2024 just like we did in 2020.

Edited March 5 by Hardkill