H and B managed to hug while looking like they wished they were in two different time zones, just as their political fortunes are going in completely different directions: Buttigieg is maybe even a little ahead of schedule in the ruthless mega-map to the presidency he probably devised when he was drinking chocolate milk in kindergarten eight or nine years ago, while Harris is looking like the first sitting vice president who will ever cackle her way to political oblivion.

What was the purpose of this little awkward-as-small-town-community-theater scene? Well, Madame Vice and the Transportation Kid were out to display to the public the fact that they totally aren’t fighting even though every other day a leak appears in the Swamptown Gazette about how Democrats are scrambling to offload her somewhere before she becomes their next presidential nominee. Don’t be surprised if she is sent on an urgent diplomatic fact-finding mission to, say, Jupiter.

Meanwhile, Team Buttigieg is playing him up as the logical heir to the Biden throne. What if, they ask, you had a presidential candidate who was actually a bright, smooth talker, with many coats of slick Harvard management consultant polish instead of a habit of breaking down into deranged laughter whenever he gets a tough question? Wouldn’t First Gay President be almost as exciting as having a woman in the top job? America may be ready for a woman president, but not this extremely odd woman in the dung-colored pantsuits.