So, it finally happened.

      These things move ridiculously slowly.

      Biden for weeks refused to throw in the towel:

• despite all the evidence of his growing unpopularity,

• despite all the evidence that he wasn’t the one who could fend off Donald Trump’s return to the presidency,

• despite all the evidence that he had (if you’ll forgive a flagrant mixed metaphor) lost a step mentally,

• despite the fact that he would be 86 by the end of a second term—the cause of much of that unpopularity.

      These things move ridiculously slowly until they move ridiculously fast.

      And now, seemingly all of a sudden, the hopes and desires of those who feel a return to the presidency of former President Donald J. Trump could pose a significant threat to American democracy, rest with a woman, Kamala Harris, we don’t really know that well.

      We are aware that she was mostly a prosecutor in California. And we may have watched her extraordinarily tough and effective interrogation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh during her short tenure in the Senate. 

      But Harris wasn’t really in the Senate long enough to make much of a mark. And it seems fair to say she hasn’t particularly distinguished herself as vice president—a job, to be sure, that doesn’t lend itself to the accumulation of distinction. Harris is hardly the first smart and tough person to stumble when asked to play a subservient, second-banana role.

      However, at 59, given the age of most of the politicians who have been running this country, Harris qualifies as refreshingly young. So it is now clearly the other party that is running the candidate who—along with his well demonstrated incompetence and authoritarianism—threatens to be perceived as a doddering old fool.

       And it remains, given the history of this country, something of a miracle that we might choose as our leader a second person of color, this one with an intriguing and refreshing half-African-American, half-Asian-American background. And it is wonderful, too, that Kamala Harris is a woman—a smart and tough woman—in a country that has lagged behind so many of the world’s democracies in putting a woman in charge.

       Joe Biden was not the first old man and not the first good man to overstay his welcome. But there is a tremendous feeling of relief that he has decided, finally and maybe, at the end, gracefully, to bow out.

      We are left with hope that Kamala Harris will rise to the occasion. And hope, actually, is feeling unfamiliar and overdue and much needed right about now.