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Maybe. I'm not sure she's been distant enough from Biden to be able to ditch the baggage he's accumulated with his stance on Israel, but I do think she would be performing better.
I think whoever gets the nomination and isn't dead yet in November gets the "any blue will do crowd". These make up the core of liberals, centrists, and brand name right-wing democrats. That's probably around 85-90% of the votes the Democratic nominee will need to win.
The cohort they are missing right now are the leftist/ activist/ anti-war section of the party, which is small, but significant. These are your "uncommitted" votes (20% in MI, just saw 10% in MD). The issue with losing this cohort is that they are the 'multiplier' cohort. They volunteer on campaigns, donate, organize, etc.
The biggest issue Democrats are facing right now is engagement.
Check out the results from Maryland (taking it because its the most recent primary).
Maryland is a good test bed because in both elections, both Trump and Biden were the defacto nominee (as before).
In 2020, 1,050,773 voters came out to vote in the Democratic primary (this was after Biden was the defacto nominee, June 1).
In 2024, this is what we're looking at:
Joe Biden 524,968 87.3
Uncommitted 58,016 9.6
Marianne Williamson 11,245 1.9
Dean Phillips 7,302 1.2
So a total of about 601531 votes so far with 90% of votes counted. So round it out to probably about 650k Democrats voting in MD's primary.
In 2020, Trump got 295,787 votes with 340k total votes being cast. In 2024 Donald Trump as gotten 208,754 votes with a total of about 280k expected to be cast.
Trump got 84.5 of 2020's primary votes, and looks like he'll get about 70% of 2024's primary votes. For Republicans, they've seen about a 18% drop in voter engagement in this primary from 2024.
In 2020, Biden got 880k or about 88% of the total votes cast for Democrats. In 2024 it looks like he'll be getting 87% of the votes again. "Uncommitted" has taken the place of Bernie Sanders this election cycle, with about 9% of the vote. However, Democrats are seeing a 40% drop in voter engagement this election cycle, dropping from about a million people voting in a forgone conclusion in 2020, to about 600k people voting in a forgone conclusion in 2024.
And that right there is the rub. If you push out the activist left of the party, who is out there signing up people to vote? Who is phone banking? Who is rallying their community to participate?
Democrats could probably suffer a protest vote from the left. But they can't suffer without what the left brings to the table, which is other people to vote.
It keeps coming back to the same thing.
Biden isn't running against Trump. He's running against himself. If Biden can't get out of his own way in regards to policy, he can't do this thing.
In regard to Kamala; I think if Biden can carry the sin of the foreign policy disaster that supporting Israel has been, I think she gets over the top. It really comes down to if she can distance herself sufficiently in regards to this specific issue and I'm not sure she can.
I agree with the analysis of Biden being an unwinnable candidate, but I really think the stain that he's put on the Democratic party is too deep now to convince the critical portion you identify as needing to come back in time. You'd have to see a near-unified front of popular DNC figures (read: Obama), respected social democrats (Bernie, Warren), party leaders, mainstream media sources (primarily MSNBC and CNN) and most of congress providing rebukes of positions and stances they've been vehemently screaming about for 7 months at this rate while directly throwing Biden under the bus in an attempt to pin all of this on Biden. Also many of these people have provided direct condemnations of the people they need to build their ground game. They're trying to build their ground game through hiring- I don't think this will work.
I see neither the party will (at the DNC level- they seem happily delusional that this will either all blow over or people will fall in line; they don't understand this is a turnout battle), it's main messaging apparatus (MSNBC, CNN), nor its elected representatives really even being willing to go along with the replacement plan. The only hope I think democrats have is Biden dying (which you've also identified). I additionally think he's about poisoned electoral politics as the primary societal vehicle of change to a large contingent of millennials and an even larger portion of Gen Z.
100% on both points. Its why I'm now effectively arguing for a yet identified 3rd party candidate. I think Jon Stewart could win. And to your second point, spending on elections has become utterly detached from outcomes. If everything is advertising, then nothing is advertising. You can't buy elections with ad-dollars any more. Grass roots organizing works because you create evangelists by empowering them to do your work for you. Bernies approach started in 2015 is still paying dividends. The approach has staying power. I think even if Biden goes ass over tea kettle, if the next nominee doesn't pivot, they also will not win.
Now to oppose this point.. It looks like Trump might end up being a convicted felon and possibly in jail? I mean this truly is a race to the bottom in terms of voter disenfranchisement. I don't know what this does to his chances. I don't know if Romney throws his hat in the race at that point. Maybe DeSantis hops back in? Hell Trump could suffer a massive heart attack any moment with the stress he's under. What happens then?
There are still a lot of unknowns this far out. But its clear to me that Democrats have destroyed the Democratic party for decades to come. If we can survive this cycle, its time to build that third party out of millennials and GenZ