Nonviolent protests work fine, great even, they just have to be disruptive. The Civil Rights movement was largely nonviolent and got results because they striked, took up commercial space so commerce couldn’t operate, and gummed up the works so productivity stalls. The suits won’t care about violence either if they have ways of escaping, they only care about direct impacts, be it directed violence or economic harm.

Although in fairness they were both centrists who pivoted more center, which imo is a recipe for disaster especially for women candidates who are just never going to capture significant rightwing votes. Kamala in particular started out really really strongly and lost more and more support as she gave up leftwing talking points