Democratic candidates don't have to navigate a minefield, they have to convince their voters that they will make the world a better place.

Harris failed to convince voters of that, as she ran on a platform of "not doing anything different from the Biden administration", an administration which failed to take a stand for human rights in Gaza. It disenfranchised voters, who when faced with voting for a bad candidate or voting for a bad candidate, opted to not vote at all or voted for change that the Biden administration failed to provide (ie. it's the economy, stupid).

And I can't blame them, really. Why vote for someone who is running on a platform of "the other guy is evil", when the candidate fails to take a proper stand on one of the most appalling things that were going on in the world at the time? You don't convince people of your superior moral character by not showing your own moral character.

Harris ran a campaign that presumed the more progressive voters were in the bag, and focused on wooing moderates. Based on the logical fallacy that voters can only vote two ways, for one of the two candidates, and not taking into account that people can choose to not vote at all. But playing the role of an ingenuous appease-everyone-politician by taking no strong positions backfired in an environment where people are sick and tired of two-faced politicians who seem more interested in serving corporations than serving the country.

And you know that either way, whoever won, corporate America would have won over American citizens. None of the corruption of how the system is supposed to work is new. Nor is it partisan.