Democrats are in an odd bind. After eight years of the all-consuming effervescence of President Barack Obama, President Joe Biden was the only starched suit capable of saving the party from the radical appeal of the socialist Bernie Sanders and his fellow “Squad” members. But in the heat and delusion of the summer of 2020, Biden beat the identitarians with the fateful promise that he would appoint a black woman as his running mate.

In doing so, he preserved his own hopes for a second term with the threat of mutually assured destruction: In appointing Kamala Harris, the only black woman in the Senate who also happened to flame out of the Democratic presidential primary long before the Iowa caucuses, Biden also ensured that the party could never replace him without her being appointed the immediate successor.