Kamala Harris, unburdened by what has been, now free to run for president

Kamala Harris, unburdened by what has been, can finally see what can be.

“My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made,” wrote President Joe Biden on X, shortly after announcing he would not run for re-election. “Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.”

With the departure of Biden, Harris is now the party’s presumptive nominee (although others may throw their hats in the ring) and this year’s presidential election has been turned upside down.

No longer will the nation be forced to participate in a re-run between two old men. The meaning of this race has shifted, and so have all of the previous assumptions about how it would end.

Should she win, Harris would be a history-making president: simultaneously the first woman, the first Black woman, and the first person of Asian descent, to hold the highest office in the land.

Not only that, she would have prevented Donald Trump from a second term in office for a second time, making her the most important political figure in the pushback against this country’s anti-democratic forces.

But it will not be a straightforward journey. Harris’s vice presidency has been rocky — dogged by dismal approval ratings and a policy portfolio that has seen her take on politically tricky issues, like the root causes of an immigration crisis that’s brought hundreds of thousands to the US in recent years.

Her difficulty finding her feet as vice president has reinforced concerns — which emerged during her first run for the Democratic nomination in 2020 — that she would