Doreen St. Félix
What was once known as the Biden Victory Fund raised more than two million dollars on Saturday, at an event held in the liberal haven of Provincetown, on Cape Cod. Maura Healey, the governor of Massachusetts, was there, as was the Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg; Jennifer Coolidge, Adrienne Warren, and Billy Porter served as pop-culture emissaries. The headliner was Vice-President Kamala Harris. A banner behind her said “vptown.” Back then, which is to say, seventy-two hours ago, she was still a surrogate for President Joe Biden, charged to convince a doubting population of the vitality of his Administration as the reigning head of state sat ill with covid in his vacation house in Rehoboth Beach, away from public view, in what was both a disaster and a mercy. “In this election, we know what candidate for President puts the American people first—our President, Joe Biden,” she said. People in the crowd were primed to see the event as an audition, even as Harris stayed on message. Afterward, an attendee posted online, “She can go the distance. I am proud of her now; I will be proud if she leads us as President of the United States.”
And now we have it. Harris has officially graduated from limbo. On Sunday afternoon, a day after the Cape Cod fund-raiser, Biden announced that he was ending his reëlection campaign. The announcement was remarkable for many reasons, the most basic being that it was accompanied by no images. There was no emergency press conference from Delaware, generating slapdash pomp. Biden wrote to the people, as if this were another century and he was a mariner gone on a long trip. (Albeit a mariner who knows how to post on social media.) His initial letter, which he published on X, said nothing about who might replace him. This sowed confusion; it seemed that Biden was not endorsing Harris. But a few minutes later, in a separate post, he clarified that he was supporting her candidacy. A couple hours later, Harris posted her own announcement that she was running.
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