Susan PageUSA TODAY
WASHINGTON − It ranks as one of the biggest gambles in American political history.
Only 100-some days before the election, Democrats pushed the incumbent president and presumptive nominee off the ticket − and not because there's any guarantee that Vice President Kamala Harris or anybody else will win in November.
They did it despite President Joe Biden's resistance because the possibility of disruption, even chaos, seemed more promising than the status quo. Now victory may not be assured, but key officeholders and strategists and voters had concluded that defeat was all but guaranteed without a change.
Better to embrace disorder than accept disaster.
There's no neat precedent for what happens next, no ready template.
The closest may be the 1968 election, a year of political violence and upheaval. Democratic President Lyndon Johnson, beleaguered by the Vietnam War, announced he wouldn't seek another term − in March, not July. The party's leading candidate, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated. Then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey was nominated at a convention in Chicago riven by anti-war protests.
He narrowly lost in November to Republican Richard Nixon.
On Thursday, triumphant Republicans nominated former President Donald Trump at their Milwaukee convention with widening confidence the GOP was poised to win not only the White House but also unified control of Congress in November.
That was a political lifetime ago, before the Democratic ticket and the political landscape shifted.
What's next?
Now Trump is the old guy on the ticket
The most damaging issue against Biden − his mental acuity at age 81 − has vanished for the Democrats and turned on the Republicans.
Now Trump, at 78, is the senior citizen seeking another term. His rambling language and verbal slips, overshadowed for months by Biden's more serious instances of confusion, are likely to face more intense scrutiny.
Democrats are poised to jump, however abruptly, to a new generation of leaders. Harris, for one, is 59.
Republicans have accused Harris of being part of a cover-up at the White House that prevented Americans from judging for themselves Biden's fitness for office until last month's debate with Trump. That's an allegation she hasn't yet answered.
“Kamala was in on it,” declared an ad now being aired by a pro-Trump super PAC, MAGA Inc., that intercuts Biden's stumbles with Harris' defense of him.
Even so, Trump complained on Truth Social that "we have to start all over again” with the campaign. He suggested that Republicans should be “reimbursed for fraud” for all the money they’ve spent running against Biden.
A prospective televised debate between Trump and Harris probably would be far different from Trump's romp at the debate with Biden last month. Harris was an effective debater against Vice President Mike Pence in 2020, and she has gained experience since then.
She often displays a prosecutor's confidence on the stump, more effective than Biden in pressing abortion rights and the question of Trump's conviction on hush-money charges. His sentencing in a New York courtroom is now set for Sept. 18, in the middle of fall's campaign sprint.
Reminder: Democrats are still divided
Minutes after announcing he withdrew from the race on Sunday, Biden backed Harris as the nominee in a post on social media. Even before she said she was running, a cascade of endorsem*nts followed, including from former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton as well as dozens of governors, senators and House members.
But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi made no endorsem*nt. On Monday morning, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin said in a series of TV appearances that there should be "a process," though in the interview on CBS he seemed to rule out running himself.
"Some path, some debates, we’d like to see something," Manchin said. "I want the center of this country to say we have a voice." Republicans portray Harris' ideology and her roots in California as far-left, a potential problem for Democratic candidates running for Congress in red and purple states.
Still expected: Huge demonstrations outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago over the Biden administration's support for Israel in its war against Hamas and the toll that has taken among Palestinians in Gaza.
Like Humphrey and Vietnam, she'll have to balance responsibility for her administration's actions with demands by activists and others for a change in policy.
A force for unity in both parties? His name is Trump
Trump is the singular force that has unified the GOP, unchallenged not only for his nomination but also for his version of a stripped-down platform that virtually abandoned the party's long-standing positions on restricting abortions and reducing the national debt.
Trump is also the singular force that has unified the Democratic Party, despite its divisions on economics, immigration and the Gaza war.
Just about every ranking Democrat has warned that Trump's election to a second term would threaten democracy itself, from the sanctity of elections to the independence of the Justice Department. That fueled the fast-forward efforts to push him from the ticket in the space of weeks − even though he had won every state primary and the allegiance of almost every convention delegate, and despite broad praise for the achievements of his presidency.
Now that same concern has prompted many Democrats to coalesce behind Harris − despite concerns among some about her unsuccessful 2020 campaign and her liberalism. Even those with national ambitions of their own have fallen in line.
"I think Democrats understand the stakes in front of them," said Jessica Mackler, president of the political powerhouse EMILYs List.
Will their gamble work? They decided it was worth a shot.
