It happened. It's Harris. Now, let's do this.

Joe Biden is not running for president, Kamala Harris is, and she must defeat Donald Trump. We can talk around the drama of Sunday, but it all comes down to that.

I did not expect to have three newsletters in July that are more broadly focused on politics and America than on court developments in America. But, I think it’s important to tell you all what I’m thinking when things are happening that ultimately do have significant — if not determinative — effects on the legal stories that I’m constantly covering. And there is no doubt that is the case here. So, let’s dig in.

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On Sunday afternoon, President Joe Biden announced — via a letter posted on Twitter/X, Instagram, and Threads — that he would not be seeking re-election.

Shortly thereafter, Biden also announced that he was endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

Then, Harris posted and began her effort “to earn and win this nomination.”

Thousands of words could be written about Sunday — and they’re all justified.

But, now it’s Monday.

What now?

There are two elements to my answer — and they relate to what I’m going to be watching for when it comes to my coverage here at Law Dork.

First, Biden has six months left in office.

In coordination with Harris over the next three-and-a-half months, but, also, independently — Biden must decide what those last six months look like.

He must do all that he can do to buttress Harris’s candidacy and make the case for her taking the reins at the end of that six months, on January 20, 2025. He must do all that he can to help protect democracy, regardless of who wins. And, finally, he now has the opportunity to determine the last markers of his legacy in government. The decades of work that preceded it will not be forgotten, and the work of his presidency will be his legacy. But, now, he can look clearly at what remains and decide what he wants to and can accomplish before leaving office.

Second, Harris is the new leader of the Democratic Party.

The 24 hours since Biden and Harris’s announcements have been a near-universal concurrence with Biden that Harris will be the Democratic nominee for president.

Although some editorial pages want an open convention, they are not acting in the Democratic Party’s best interest and, more fundamentally, they are wrong about what is best for the nation. Harris is the vice president — and has been for three-and-a-half years. She was on the ballot in the primaries this year to serve as the vice president for a man who is turning 82 in November. Democrats have already chosen Harris. What happened Sunday made the transition from Biden to Harris, in a sense, more transparent because the voters will now be voting for her at the top of the ticket in November. To pretend what is happening now is somehow inappropriate is to dismiss Harris’s constitutional and electoral role for the past four years — since Biden selected her as his vice president.

The other claim advanced over the past 24 hours is that there was a “mindless rally” behind Harris, showing that those people are not “independent thinkers.” This is either disingenuous or misinformed, depending on who is saying it. Most are simply doing exactly what they said they would do if Biden dropped out: Backing his vice president.

For many, myself included, Harris would not be my first choice in a let’s-start-over primary for the Democratic nomination. However, as Harris has told us, “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”

The national context was and is that Donald Trump wants to be president again, a rotted-out Republican Party nominated him for president last week, and Democrats must win because Trump does not care about our democracy and is uniquely unqualified to be president. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, had a candidate who many believed could not either campaign sufficiently against Trump or defeat him on Election Day. There was nonstop discussion since the debate about what should happen next, and many of us — thinking our own thoughts with our own brains — reached the conclusion that Harris was the only realistic candidate for 2024. Then, Sunday happened and Harris was also the president’s choice — as she had been for the past four years — to take over.

Democrats — and independents and Republicans and anyone else — backing Harris now are doing so because of their independent thinking about the best way of advancing their long-term goals, not in opposition to independent thinking (or as evidence that they lack it). That in no way means that people think she best advances their particular aims. It means that people — myself included — can look at the landscape and decide that, in this moment, this is the best option that can happen to support a path forward.

Harris now must do the work to show the country that the support she already has been given should translate into votes. She can do that for all of the reasons that had led her to this moment, as many others have detailed in the weeks since the debate.

At the same time, this is not only work. This is an extraordinary opportunity for Harris to lay out her vision for the future. Much that I have been discussing at Law Dork over the past two years is right in Harris’s wheelhouse. Few politicians understand in such concrete terms how dangerous decisions of this U.S. Supreme Court have been in recent years. Harris will talk forthrightly about the end of Roe v. Wade and the need to protect abortion rights. Harris should be able to do the same in many other areas, including the dangers to democracy posed by Trump.

As Biden puts the finishing touches on his legacy, Harris needs to let us know that future legacies remain in front of us — and that we protect that future, in part, by closing the door on Trump.

I look forward to diving into the ways in which she can do that, examining — and questioning — her plans to do so, and working to keep everyone here informed about what’s happening.