Cenks specific criticism of Kamala Harris was that he thought she was a weak candidate.

I'm not going to say he was 100% correct about this but I will say that she does seem to be taking stupid positions. 

Eg. Constantly talking about how she's going to help small business owners. 

Eg. Embracing Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney. And overall trying to win over Republicans that don't think Trump is polite enough. 

Eg. Refusing to be anti-war. Refusing to promote a ceasefire or talk about conditioning weapons transfers. 

Kamala Harris is also completely abandoned her progressive positions from the 2020 primary. 

She now supports strong restrictions against immigration. She previously wanted a more humane border policy and talked about the humanity of immigrants.

She literally criticizes Trump for torpedoing in the right wing immigration bill proposed during the biden administration.

Kamala Harris criticized carbon emitting energy sources in 2020. Now she's strongly pro fracking.

She used to support Medicare for all. She No longer does.

I think an open convention where the Democratic candidates would have competed against each other would have caused them to use more leftist rhetoric and it would have pushed them to the left. I also think this would have helped the Democratic party appear more anti-war.


Overall I think Cenk was right. Leftists should have been universally pushing for an open primary 
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I don’t necessarily disagree, and hindsight will be 2020, but because of the reluctance of Biden to step aside, Democrats wasted 2-3 weeks. I don’t know how much a primary would do with the time available and still question if it would be the right call since the eventual winner would face an even shorter runway to Election Day and could face additional challenges with something like a bitter Biden-Harris lame-duck admin. All that said, I’d love if a primary had happened to push the eventual candidate left but there’s also no grantee they would remain left as soon as the primary ended. Norman Finkelstein recently said in an interview that for all you can critique the Republican Party, they were the more Democratic Party this cycle. The Democratic Party merely held a coronation
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There was no time for a primary. 

The debate was whether there should have been an open convention where the delegates could have chosen who made the best argument at the convention. 

Open conventions used to be common.

The candidate would have been chosen at the convention and then all of the time after the convention would have been used for the campaign. 

Believe it or not that's how it used to work.
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I think that's the key point- as it stands, they legit didn't have time. Biden wasted too many months acting like he could hack it, and by the time even he could read the writing on the wall, there were comparative seconds left on the clock to get someone, *anyone* up to speed. 

He *should have* been primaried from the start- but Democrats are inherently cowardly. They'd have *never*.

So now we're stuck with coconut memes, endless genocide in the middle east, shit healthcare and a handful of wonky tax credits. *Woooo*. The only benefits I see to Harris at this point are: 

1. She won't be *actively hunting* LGBTQ+ people for sport like the GOP will;

2. She won't dismantle the Department of Education;

3. She *seems* like she'll codify Roe, given wins in the House &amp; Senate (of course, Obama said he'd do that too, but hey whos counting lol);

4. She makes the MAGAts mad.

Beyond that, she sucks.

The Left *has to unify* after this. We can't abide this internecine tribalist horseshit tripping us up. The Democrats *have to be outflanked* in an organized, coordinated manner.
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