Kamala Harris Could Probably Wrap This Thing Up Pretty Quickly

Update, July 21, 2: 25 p.m.: Joe Biden has announced he has decided to end his run for president and endorsed Harris as his replacement. Basically, unless she commits several spectacular blunders in a row during public appearances this week, she’s got this one in the bag.

Heading into the weekend, there seem to be few remaining obstacles to Joe Biden stepping down from the Democratic ticket. NBC News has a big old article Friday, bylined to five (!) different reporters, which says that the Biden family has started discussing how such an announcement could be framed to best protect his dignity and ensure his legacy and so forth. Elsewhere, more high-profile House Democrats have issued statements calling on Biden to leave the race, and Hill reporter Jake Sherman says that others will continue to follow next week if he doesn’t.

One obstacle that does reportedly exist: Team Biden is worried about factional infighting breaking out because donors and other members of the party think Vice President Kamala Harris isn’t up to the job of replacing him. A “former Biden senior official” said as much to the New Republic’s Greg Sargent, while Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hinted at the dynamic in an Instagram Live.

Let’s be honest: AOC is probably talking about me here, as she does often. More than two weeks ago, I wrote that Democrats needed to have an open competition to replace Biden in order to prove their seriousness about democracy and ensure that the next candidate is ready to be put under such an enormous spotlight. (Ezra Klein and James Carville followed my lead several days later by publishing similar pieces in a mid-Atlantic city newspaper.) Given Harris’ poor performance in the 2020 presidential primary, I shared the concerns that she might not be up to the job.

A few things have changed in those few weeks, though. One is that … it’s two weeks later. No other potential Democratic nominee has launched a campaign for the role because Biden hasn’t dropped out. So no one else has started to raise money or hire staff for what would need to be a quickly assembled national operation.

Meanwhile, Trump has extended his polling lead (albeit only by a little, to 3 points nationally in RealClearPolitics’ aggregate). Democrat to Be Named Later, in other words, has already lost ground relative to both Trump and Harris, the latter of whom would be taking over Biden’s campaign apparatus and inheriting his fundraising accounts.

And the spotlight, naturally, has already turned to the VP. CNBC reports that events featuring her speeches have started to sell out. At these events, she’s demonstrated what is probably the core competency required of a Democratic nominee at the moment: coming across as sharper mentally than the current major-party candidates while delivering an easy-to-understand message about Donald Trump and J.D. Vance’s positions.

To wit:

Coherent message, coherent delivery. (Solid speech writing too: “If you claim to stand for unity, you need to do more than just use the word.”) Grading on the current Democratic presidential candidate curve, that’s an A-plus-plus.

Harris has also done adequately in the recent flood of head-to-head polling putting her against Trump, averaging about a point better than Biden. The last box for her to check would be an unscripted appearance, whether in an interview with a member of the nonpartisan press or in a town hall, during which she’d be pressed on issues that are “bad” for Democrats right now, like inflation and immigration.

If Harris were to perform with confidence in that setting—which would probably draw a TV audience in the tens of millions at minimum—she’d likely leave it as the heavy favorite to become the Dem nominee, open convention or not. And while that might not be the process you’d draw up in a best-case scenario, well, the Democrats are currently putting more distance between themselves and best-case scenario every day.