Watching it in real time, I still don't understand it. I could see how Trump won the first time around; Hillary Clinton was unpopular with most people outside of her party's leadership, but the second just seems insane. The kinds of things that would happen were obvious to me, and I am no expert.
Not the second time, the third time. Remember that Biden whooped Trump's ass once and could have whooped his ass a second time, but the donor class (career retards) got cold feet when they were forced to confront his senility, and instead of letting the election be one senile old man against another senile old man, they replaced Biden with the archetype of an HR bitch. I hope nobody thinks it a coincidence that the two times Trump won were the two times he was up against a woman. Americans don't want to vote for their mother-in-law, nor for the head of HR. And yes, that certainly is sexist, but it is what it is.
I just pray they run Newsom this time. Despite his "being from California" handicap, I think he should be able to easily beat Vance by simply being a handsome white man with a white family. Vance is critically flawed and will demoralize much of the far right IFF his opponent doesn't share those same weaknesses.
Two party system. As many people didn't like Hillary, clearly there were a lot of people unhappy with Biden->Harris. When you don't like the current admin's direction and/or their party, there's only one other party to select. I think there were plenty of voters that truly did not believe this would be the result of that protest vote.