So…President Harris, y/y?

Four-ish years ago, I thought “okay, Biden’s probably planning to be a one-term president, they’re going to spend the term teeing up his VP to succeed him.”

Then Biden announced he was running, after four years of me not hearing news about any particular goodwill-building initiatives for Harris, and I thought, “well, this seems like poor planning, but that’s the Democrats for you. Time to suck it up and grudgingly vote for Biden again, I guess.”

And now — less than four months out from the actual election?! — Biden announces he’s formally backing out, and passing the torch to Harris after all…

…and the people love it? Look at this ActBlue tracker site — the day of Harris’s announcement was the biggest fundraising day since they started counting, the next day was the second-biggest, and this week overall has been the biggest fundraising week since they started counting. A chart previously topped by the last few October-November weeks before the 2020 election!

It’s July!

She has the enthusiasm of donors. She has the cool-kid meme market locked up. Her recounting of her mother’s folksy wisdom (here’s a video clip of just that line, and here’s a transcript of the whole speech) has swept the internet with “coconut tree” memes, going so viral so fast that it has wildly outstripped the people trying to say “hold on, the word ‘coconut’ is used as an insult against South Asian people, maybe let’s not–?”

Honestly, this has gone so unexpectedly well, now I’m wondering if it was a 4D chess move by the Democrats the whole time.

Get all the Republican attack ads focused on Biden, all their money and energy poured into developing anti-Biden strategies — then yank him away at the last second, faster than Lucy with the football when Charlie Brown is about to kick it. Don’t waste their time and energy on two years of Democratic candidates facing off against each other trying to win primaries, capped with all the runners-up awkwardly pivoting into endorsing the nominee — just let the Biden-Harris ticket sweep up delegates almost by default, then bump Harris into the top spot, with a queue of popular Democrats lined up to release their endorsements.

If this was on purpose, it would’ve taken a lot of competence and savviness behind the scenes, all while keeping up a public appearance of being disorganized and tone-deaf. It is really hard to believe the Democrats could be that good at…you know, anything. But for the first time in a long time, it doesn’t feel impossible?

It’s weird to feel hope about American politics again. Come on, folks, we better not screw this \up.