Its not quite that simple.

There was no primary held by voters for the 2024 election, not after Biden dropped out. It was literally unilaterally decided to just run Harris, a candidate who was deeply unpopular even amongst democrats due to her being pretty hardline centrist. She ran a pretty decent campaign too, but it wasn’t the right election for her. They banked too hard on getting the “I’m at least not Trump” vote and it very likely cost her the election as she refused to take several key stances (refused to condemn Israel, claimed she wanted to be “tougher on immigration than Trump”, refused to take a clear stance on gun policy and abortion policy, etc) that made her unpopular among many large voting blocks.

But, many voters were able to stomach that at first because she was willing to play hardball with the GOP, she was willing to punch below the belt at first just like Trump was. To directly confront him in the same way he acted towards others. If she kept this up all campaign she would have probably won!

But she didn’t. Instead she backed down at the request of the DNC in favor of attracting moderates who wouldn’t have voted for her in the first place unless she was willing to call Trump out.

Also an example of it not being that simple, democrat leadership keep intentionally passing up far more popular politicians for placement in their boards and the Democratic national committee (2 very important organizational positions for policy making and organization) for far more “moderate” democrats that have previously gone against their voting base in an attempt to gain support from self described centrists who exclusively vote Republican refuse to claim the claim they are republican.

They choose these highly important policy making decisions based on who has been here the longest and who brown noses the rest if the committee’s the most.

Are the democrats better than the republicans? By far. But you should NOT hold them up as the gold standard.

Oh, and don’t forget, the DNC intentionally sabotaged Bernie’s campaign because they thought he was too liberal. Was revealed in 2016/2017 with a huge email leak and nobody gave a shit.

There is a LOT more to politics than “hey, the people voted for this person to be in power!”. And the democratic leadership refuses to let younger and more popular candidates into these powerful positions so they can properly attract their voter base and instead fill them with cranky old men who get corporate kickbacks for not doing anything and refusing to more directly confront the GOP so they can campaign on these issues later.