First, the summer of love was, imho, partly due to people being locked in their homes, tons of people not working even if they wanted to, and things were just simmering.
The “protests” allowed the lefties who wanted to tell everyone else to stay home and shut up, the opportunity to do the opposite without having significant opposition from normal people who would’ve been in those areas.
The other difference is that this was a clear repudiation of the anomaly of the Biden election - even ignoring the fraud. From day one he claimed he was a one term president, which is why choosing someone like Harris who got zero support from her own party was so ridiculous. I remember thinking how funny it was that the Dems just fucked themselves with their own idpol. No one gets to that office then just walks away unless they are forced to. But Harris never was able to garner any support, so they knew that Biden was seen as too old and too white and picked Harris to calm the progressive wing. But they also knew Harris was not going to win any election. Not even a primary.
They were forced to shove her in because Biden was so clearly degrading in front of everyone they couldn’t hide it. But every damn person in the media and the administration knew she sucked and relied on their media apparatus to mobilize the “vote blue no matter who” base which is most of their party at this point. Because they aren’t addressing how many people actually voted for Biden in 2020 and happily voted for Trump this week. The party apparatus knows that happened but doesn’t want to talk about it at all.
The media, the journoscum, the party elite, they all knew they were kinda fucked but also continue to be arrogant as hell. They lost even harder than they anticipated and it’s got them a bit rattled.