a majority consistently said they wanted "someone else" as the nominee through 2022-23.
I guess those polls were wrong. Or else he reeled them back in somehow.
It’s more like no one else stepped up to replace him
An inoffensive generic D Congressman jumped into the race and barely got any votes. If the majority of Democrats wanted Biden to be replaced, Phillips would have had enough appeal to most of them that he would have gotten a whole lot more votes than he got.
It's not like Biden squeaked one out and then I'm saying "haha I guess those polls were WRONG after alll!!!1" If that had happened, sure maybe the polls were right but Phillips just didn't have quite enough appeal to tap into it. But given the margins, it's pretty clear that was nothing for Phillips to tap into in the first place.
Most Democrats didn't want to -replace- Biden, they wanted him to step aside voluntarily.
It's kind of like a company who has a very loyal and well-liked older employee who is no longer as effectively able to do the job as a younger person would. They don't have really grounds to fire this person, and doing so would get a very bad reaction from other employees, but they hope he retires sooner rather than later.
