Uncharted territory: Biden’s departure means Dems must get their act together, now | Opinion

Joe Biden’s late exit from the presidential race plunges a divided nation into uncharted territory while providing a fresh alternative to Donald Trump that many Americans have been yearning for.

There is precious little time to reframe this race into what it should have been all along, a referendum on Trump, who only honors an election if he happens to win. Trump’s election would place this country into the hands of an unhinged authoritarian. Democrats need to rally voters to their side by making the case that their policies can improve their lives while maintaining a democracy, our constitution, our laws and our institutions.

Biden endorsed Kamala Harris, his vice president, to be his successor. Procedurally, the delegates attending the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month can vote for whomever they want, now that Biden has withdrawn from the race. Biden’s logical succession preference will go a long way toward avoiding a divisive and chaotic convention with no clear top of the ticket.

Biden has given Harris little time to pick her vice president, establish herself at the top of the party and make her case for the nation’s highest job. But it is enough time, with a huge caveat. The Democratic Party, mired in intramural squabbling, finally needs to get its act together. It needs to frame the choice between two very different futures for this country. The Democrats must be united in making an articulate, full-throated argument for a better nation that finally leaves Trump and Trumpism in the past.

Trump gave the most incoherent performance of all presidential candidates in the history of debates last month, devoid of facts and filled with fantasies about how women never wanted the federal government to protect their right to choose. In a normal election cycle, Trump’s declining cognitive capacity, his mentions of movie serial killers as a way to talk about immigration, would have the undivided attention of the country.

It took a calamitous performance by Biden to make himself the focus of aging and mental decline. Try as he may, Biden simply could not run from his own failing body. The more he tried to deflect attention about his own physical and mental well being, the more many Americans simply could not focus on anything else. Biden finally decided he had to leave this race to try to turn the focus back on Trump.

Amid history, it is nearly impossible to judge it. The historic choice just made by this president comes closer to the nominating convention than any similar, previous choice. Americans appear to be united in how the stakes are extraordinarily high this election. Biden clearly made this decision with those stakes in mind.

And now it could be Harris’ moment to shine or wilt in the unforgiving spotlight of presidential politics. Her candidacy would be historic. She could be the first Black woman - the first woman - to be elected president.

There is reason to hope that she is also the right person at the right moment to save this country from Trump.

Harris has been most comfortable in her career as a prosecutor in San Francisco and California’s attorney general. Now, she must prosecute her case against Donald Trump. Her background in law enforcement gives her a standing that a career politician like Biden simply never had.

The daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, the 59-year-old Harris represents a generational change in American presidential politics. She has succeeded at every step of her remarkable career. To the open question of whether the United States is ready to elect a Black woman, or any woman, to the Oval Office, the answer to that question can and should be yes.

Harris is qualified. She is ready.

Trump undoubtedly will try to debase and diminish her every step of the way, trying to obfuscate the underlying choice to voters about our future. For Harris, a storm isn’t coming. It has arrived. She has the potential to weather it. She is younger, smarter and more in command of reality than her opponent. This is the time for undecided voters to size Harris up for who she truly is, not what others say she is.

Serious candidates for president do not want to be introduced by celebrity wrestlers and ultimate fighting executives. What just happened at the Republican National Convention was nothing short of a sick joke. We have witnessed the complete capitulation of a once vibrant and vital party into a puppet dictatorship led by a deranged liar who keeps secret his medical and tax records. That should frighten Republicans and Democrats alike.

This should not be a close race. The Democrats have managed to make it one. A frightened world is hoping that America gets its act together. This election is all about Donald Trump. He belongs in Mara-Lago, not the White House.

This story was originally published July 21, 2024 at 1:11 PM with the headline "Uncharted territory: Biden’s departure means Dems must get their act together, now | Opinion."