a big takeaway from all of the Biden drama is that huge swathes of the public — including reasonably engaged people — think that political parties are a small cabal of elites who select candidates by hand
Also US history is basically all taught as one person doing things so you can’t blame normies for thinking that’s how it works
Heck Ginny Thomas thought / thinks there is some secret powerful cabal of “them” not realizing she’s IN the cabal
Cigar smoke-filled backrooms describes the 1968 Democratic convention, as well as the legacy media offices which have refused to cover Trump and Epstein connections due to liability.