Was biden a better choice afterall...
There wasn't really any good juncture to make any other choice than him, until the issue was forced and then there was no good juncture to make any choice but Harris. Actively going through even performative motions of "so who do we
really want?", at any point, would have just been playing into the hands of the opposition, with no other obvious aspirants (even now, there's no "We would have been better off with <Foo>" talk, it seems,
perhaps excluding anything for Biden, which I'll not consider serious). How much of this 'transitional status-quo' was "behind the scenes machinations" is arguable, but it was at least as valid a process (at face value) as that which returned the 'choice' of Republican candidate, given the situation and schedule. Everything else being the same, Biden couldn't realistically have done better if he'd have hung on.
What seems clear from the demographical breakdown is that women don't vote (either way) as much as men, and that it's middle-aged people who are disproportionately influential (not seniors). And a surprisingly large anti-Harris push from the black community.
I'm going to give the 'credit' to the spinmeisters behind the President-(re)elect's campaign (Project 2025, etc) who managed to use all the various random events fully to their advantage, posing and framing their man in far better light than he actually deserves, and probably using every dirty trick in the book against the Democratic effort. Possibly a few not even in the books, too. (Modern politics has become a 'spinocracy', and I admire but worry about parties that actually try not to go full meme. Admire for their relative integrity, but worry that they're hobbling themselves against those for whom the end always justifies their means.)