The Democrats, Ramesh says, “desperately need to turn the page on everything that’s been bad about our politics for the last ten years, at least. And the way [they] do that is essentially by reelecting the Biden administration, but [call] it the Harris administration.”

“I think . . . that there are real challenges here for the party,” Charlie says, “in that even if they manage to get her into the White House, they have built a case for precisely nothing. They’ve built a case for her being president because of ‘joy’ and ‘historic’ and ‘a new way forward’ and nothing else.”