The Harris nomination was not a coup

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The government was not overthrown.

The Constitution says nothing about how political parties should choose their nominee.

Not to say it was not shocking, underhanded, and not Democratic.

It was shocking because since 1972 voters have chosen the nominee through mostly primaries.

In 1968 Hubert Humphrey won the nomination without winning a single primary. That was the impetus for making primaries binding. Before then it was deal-making symbolized by the proverbial smoke-filled room.

But I am curious, from an historical perspective - regardless of HOW someone becomes the party nominee, when was the last time the party backed a candidate, only to pull out mid-course?

In school, they told us Truman stepped down after nearly 8 years to re-establish Geo. Washington's precedent of two terms. In reality, the party knew he would lose and didn't back him, politely telling him to step down.

Ditto for LBJ. He didn't even attempt to campaign in 1968, saying openly he would not seek or accept the party nomination. He was told behind closed doors, "You will lose, we are not backing you, step down." HHH was sort of an emergency nominee after the heir presumptive, RFK, was assassinated. So, 1968 was a screwy election due to circumstances.

I guess Biden is the same. Despite WANTING to be candidate, and despite being the presumptive candidate, he pulled out before the convention and before an official nomination. Still, at least Truman and LBJ were given advanced warning. Seems like elder abuse what they did to Biden. But, usually, the current president, if eligible, almost always wins the party nomination if he wants to run again.

The only exception to this was back in the antebellum 1850s; Franklin Pierce was the only incumbent president who actually went to the convention wanting to win a nomination to run for a second term, but he didn't get his party's support: "This loss marked the only time in U.S. history that an elected president who was an active candidate for reelection was not nominated by his political party for a second term."

I'm not sure that it has happened, it's been rare enough for a sitting President to not seek re-election at least once, with most sticking to what is close to the current restrictions in terms of 2 full terms, and up to half of another if they step in mid-term.

This whole business is retrograde and the Democrats need to get absolutely hammered over going the wrong way for the 3rd election in a row. It may have been acceptable during the 18th and 19th centuries to do that, but these days there's the ability to have much larger elections where the people are generally informed on the issues if they care to be. Just look at India, they have the largest elections the planet has ever seen and they're still a relatively poor country.

I'll personally be voting 3rd party because I can't in good conscience vote for either of the retrograde candidates that the major parties are putting up.

But if we ignore the definition of a coup and just prattle on in bad faith we can pretend that Harris' nomination is a coup.

This is a good way to look at 3rd parties-

I can't believe this guy (who as I understand it is a well-known and respected academic) would vote for Jill Stein instead of Barack Obama.

So I did a brief search on Jill Stein, and I can't say I strongly disagree with her stated views, but the effect of her insistence on running for President every four years only helps the Right so I have to take what she says publicly with a grain of salt. She could at least take the path Bernie Sanders has taken, which is that he is not a Democrat but caucuses with them in the Senate and has never run as a 3rd party candidate (he has also asked his supporters to vote Democrat in the general election although much of that has fallen on deaf ears).

Perhaps Dr. Chomsky holds to a higher ideal, but now is not the time for that sort of thing. As an aside, the US Constitution is rather an interesting phenomenon. It's the result of a thought experiment whereby a group of people sincerely tried to construct what to them seemed an optimal structure for government. It probably gets all the shade it does because it's so unlike anybody else's constitution. Probably their biggest mistake is they underestimated how important political parties would become. But Americans acting as though they lived in a Parliamentary democracy when they don't, just adds more foolishness.

I've lost count of how many unelected Prime Ministers our last Tory government foisted on us, and I guess that's less democratic than switching the Presidential candidate just before an election, so I wasn't too fussed about the Harris thing. Once a leader becomes a tarnished brand, like "sleepy Joe" had, the party notices and tries a fresh face. Of course there'll be some dissent from those who don't think the tarnish was so bad, and there may be a bit of a battle within the party. Not exactly a coup.