I'm not following you here. What makes you say Biden was always going to lose? If anything, I think it was only his repeated gaffes ("if you ain't for me you ain't black.." anyone?), and his obvious mental decline, that stopped him winning by a wider margin.

For many people, a vote for Biden was a vote against Trump. That alone already made it likely he'd win.

I think the problem is that so many people genuinely don't see how regressive this methodology is. Their focus is so singularly on the positives of normalising the sight of people like Jackson in places like the Supreme Court (positives that I see clearly), that they excuse the unnecessary harm Biden's framing does to her legitimacy.

As I point out in the article, melanin has long been a factor in “meritocracy”. So has sex. It’s just that presidents didn’t used to announce it and expect a pat on the back.