The Kamala Harris Assessment

Day 1 of the Biggest Campaign Ever

“Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence; and that, after forty five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.”

President George Washington, September 19, 1796

I said it yesterday in the video we released from The Lincoln Project: Joe Biden is a good man, a good American, and a great president.

Alongside the burdens of age and office, an aggressive pressure campaign among a clique of elite Democratic consultants and media insiders had reached the point where he could no longer proceed as the nominee.

This painful, terrible decision was selfless, agonizing, and uniquely American. He did the unimaginable in the eyes of many who are addicted to the hardest drug of all: political power and position.

The shock rippling through our political system yesterday continues to reverberate. It ensures that Joe Biden has a place in history as a president who carried on the intent of our founders and our first president that he would sacrifice for the nation's good when the moment came.

Joe Biden put country over power and principle over politics. He made that sacrifice in pain, betrayed by many around him. It was a decision made by a man who served this country his entire adult life and understood better than most of the political, social, national, and existential risk of failure against Donald Trump.

We will remember Biden well and fondly, even when Donald Trump’s gravesite reeks of piss for a hundred generations and his name is reviled in every history of these times.