It should have been a slam dunk, against the most popular conservative candidate in the modern age? Ok. A lot of people share your sentiment, but imo this is a prime example why we failed and will likely fail again in the future, and theres little the Democratic Party leadership could do about it then or can do about in the future. For all of the democrats flaws, the majority of the blame falls on the electorate. The choice was exceedingly clear, objectively more clear than any election in any living persons memory, but too many were either too apathetic, or believed that it was bound to be a slam dunk because how could the country elect a felon, sexual abuser, fraudster, insurrectionist to the presidency? But the truth is no matter how close to perfect the democratic candidate/leadership could become, we have an anti-intellectual, propaganda driven movement happening in this country in favor of fascism and extreme right-wing ideas. Thats not going to change whether or not the dems are led by old guards or new bloods. The next dem candidate could say and do all the right things, and be exactly who you want them to be, and still lose because an alarming amount of people in this country dont understand basic economics, or how tariffs work, and/or base all their political opinions off of memes shared on social media, favored by algorithms designed to pump as much right wing content to their eyeballs as possible.