I am asking genuinely: is he stepping down to be replaced with someone more popular among the base to give the party a better chance at victory? If not then that could be a problem but I wonder if there may be some attempt at change?

Unfortunately it seems the anonymity of being online emboldens and amplifies the worst behaviors of entitled people, sorry this is a frequent occurrence for you but they just want to tear you down cause they are jealous of you.

Imo opinion Floridian is a better comparison but yeah the point still stands lol

I agree, it's not exactly a good hard mode it's just the flimsy version they added in.

I think it might be because technically the new game + functions as a kind of "hard mode"