'The Story' panelists Lisa Boothe and Mark Penn unpack 2024 presidential election polling.

Before she became her party’s nominee for president, Kamala Harris had not made a substantial, discernable positive public impact during her nearly four years in the White House. She largely operated under the radar and fell short regarding some of her most high-profile assignments.

She had not universally distinguished herself as a leader. She had not won over swaths of new fans. She had not fully earned her place as next in line. She was known more in Washington circles for her rocky relationships with her staff members and her sagging approval ratings than for anything she had actually accomplished.

HARRIS STRUGGLES TO NAME ‘ONE POLICY’ DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HER AND BIDEN

To be sure, through the first few years of the Biden-Harris administration, the vice president received praise for assuming an outsize role in the fights for abortion and voting rights, and for building solid relationships with important foreign allies. Although mocked for her word salads and piercing guffaws, she did not overtly undercut the administration’s agenda. For those who saw her up close, she was impressive but not iconic, charismatic but not yet a superstar.

And on July 21, when Joe Biden stepped aside and Harris stepped in, she was good enough. Democrats and Never Trumpers had said it time and again. They just wanted someone healthy. Someone normal. Someone sane. Someone different. Someone not Biden, someone not Trump. Someone else.

I would vote for any functioning politician over Biden and Trump.

I would vote for that squirrel in that tree over Trump.

There’s no such thing as a perfect candidate.

The country needs to turn the page on tired, wacky, old men.

Harris is tolerable.

Maybe Harris will surprise us.

And surprise them she did.

On that sticky summer Sunday afternoon when Biden announced his decision to drop out of the presidential race and endorsed his number two to be the Democratic nominee for president, no one, not even Harris herself, knew what was going to happen.

A collective derecho-sized sigh of relief rose up from Democrats coast to coast, north to south, and every Blue enclave in between.

President Biden’s disastrous June debate performance had exposed the extent of his decline and put a glaring and unequivocal spotlight on his limitations as a candidate and as a prospective second-term president. Democratic voters and staunch party loyalists, Trump detractors, Trump loathers, and Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferers had all feared the worst: They were stuck with an acuity-compromised octogenarian who could not deliver the votes and would surely lose the election. And then, their unthinkable, impossible nightmare would occur—Donald Trump would return to the White House.

After several weeks of party pressure and serpentine political machinations the likes of which have........

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