>if your candidate could only win by having the moderate vote split five ways, you're the ones doing political maneuvering.

That's highly presumptive. Supporters of the other candidates made their initial choices for reasons. If they could have chosen someone other than Biden, they would have. The DNC purposely induced a panicked run to their chosen candidate (when they weren't calling heads instead of tails). That's as much a vote as the decision which door to exit out of after someone yells, "Fire," is a choice. To belabor the analogy: there was no fire. They pushed everyone to the leave the way that led to the concession stand instead of to the parking lot.

On the other hand, if your candidate can only win by forcing his ideological rivals out of the race with backdoor quid-pro-quo deals, not only is he now corrupt, he is still definitely only winning through political maneuvering.

>Polls always showed that Biden was the Obama guy.

Clarence Thomas and Strom Thurmond.

> If they could have chosen someone other than Biden, they would have

They could have chosen Bernie(they didn't want to).

> The DNC purposely induced a panicked run to their chosen candidate (when they weren't calling heads instead of tails). That's as much a vote as the decision which door to exit out of after someone yells, "Fire," is a choice.

Bernie's name was on the ballot. He was / is one of the most recognizable politicians in the U.S. He had plenty of money to campaign. My above point better explains his loss.

> On the other hand, if your candidate can only win by forcing his ideological rivals out of the race with backdoor quid-pro-quo deals, not only is he now corrupt, he is still definitely only winning through political maneuvering.

Force is massive cope. Do you think they would prefer to stay in, 100% lose, and get nothing for it? People that are closely aligned consolidate their efforts. That's how democracy works.

> Clarence Thomas and Strom Thurmond

Just look up the polls. Biden always crushed with African Americans.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that Capitalism is about "How much can I spend?", and not, "How much do I own (and how can I leverage it)?". Property like media outlets, where you can do things like manufacture consent (e.g., convincing black voters that the man who railroaded Anita Hill, and who called the most virulent segregationist of his generation a dear friend, cared about black folks' interests). Like your party's national committee, where you threaten members and candidates with persona non grata-status for campaigning or endorsing against your whims. Like the candidate himself, who initially did not want to run in the first place.

All of these things represent influence - influence that, like other methods used to induce fear and panic, can undermine both individual's rational decision-making process and their capacity to express their raw feelings.

Let's be clear: there was zero broad enthusiasm for Biden's policies (partly because he refused to detail them). But leveraging influence can allow you to take an electorate that, by all measures, wanted Bernie Sanders' platform - with M4A and the GND in particular being wildly popular - and turn it into one that checks the box next to Biden's name instead. What you get is not an expression of the electorate's will or desire, but of their terror.

So, actually, the influence of Capitalism (through the means I spoke of earlier - in a word, corruption) readily explains Biden's win in 2020. He was not a good candidate, he was not a good president, and people did not want to vote for him, but felt forced to, because an overwhelming amount of capital was leveraged to that end. People, in fact, did choose Bernie, until coerced not to. And that was simply a matter of people with wealth getting what they wanted. It may very well be that you only get to stand up to that force once in a lifetime, and Millennials had already elected Obama.