Joe Biden is not 77 in the way that Mick Jagger is 77. The Democratic candidate for the White House wears the years with a heaviness that is not lost even on his enthusiasts. While he never rules out a second term, this avowed “bridge” to the next generation implies just the one. With its lack of travel and live events, this Covid-19 election campaign, The Campaign That Isn’t, has spared him. The grandest public office in the world will not.
Kamala Harris is, then, in line to be as much co-president as vice-president of the US. In the senator for California, Mr Biden has hired not just a running mate but an executive burden-sharer and — forgive the macabre note — a viable stand-in. Given Mr Biden’s taste for foreign affairs, she might have space to impose herself on the domestic realm in particular. Her potential influence is vast.
It is also ambiguous. Mr Biden has chosen Ms Harris, yes, but which one? Disaffected Republicans will hope for the tenacious prosecutor with the Third Way patter. “It’s not progressive to be soft on crime,” she said, running for district attorney of San Francisco in 2003. As California’s attorney-general, she confronted the parents of truant children more zealously than she did the state’s draconian justice system.