Less than 24 hours after Joe Biden announced he was abandoning his re-election bid, Vice President Kamala Harris’s path to securing the Democratic presidential nomination is becoming clearer.

Remember this text:
“That may end up being the easy part. The most formidable challenge—defeating Republican nominee Donald Trump in November—is still to come. Her elevation to the top of the ticket would bring new strengths for the Democrats, but it also exposes weaknesses that were less of a concern with Mr. Biden.”

According to recent polls, Ms. Harris is slightly behind the former president, a position similar to the one Mr. Biden was in before his historic announcement. However, these numbers may change as we move from a hypothetical matchup to a real one.

For at least a moment, Democrats have a jolt of energy after more than three weeks of intense hand-wringing over the president’s fitness and ability to sustain his campaign.

All of Ms Harris’s leading potential rivals for the nomination have endorsed her, as has former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi – who remains one of the most influential players in Democratic politics.

This is, still, shaping up to be a tight race in November – a condition that reflects deep partisan trenches in American politics and the distaste many voters have for Trump as a candidate.

The vice-president’s primary challenge – and opportunity – will be to capitalise on this Trump aversion, attract centrist voters in key swing states and energise the Democratic base, which was in the past few weeks swinging towards despair, to match the enthusiasm many on the right hold for the former president.

The renewed enthusiasm for the Democratic presidential campaign of Vice President Harris is backed by a significant amount of fundraising. The campaign reported that she raised over $80 million in new donations within 24 hours of Mr. Biden’s announcement. This is the largest one-day total of any candidate in this election cycle. Additionally, she has nearly $100 million from the Biden-Harris fundraising efforts, which provides a strong financial foundation for the upcoming campaign.

Ms Harris, if she becomes the nominee, also defuses one of the most effective attacks the Republicans have levelled against their opponent: his age.

For months, the Trump campaign has been pounding Mr Biden for being feeble and easily confused – characterisations that were reinforced for many Americans after the president’s halting debate performance four weeks ago.

The vice-president, at age 59, will be a more energetic campaigner and able to make a more coherent case for her party. She could also turn the 78-year-old Trump’s age against him, as he would become the oldest person ever elected president.

Ms Harris may also be able to shore up support from black voters, who polls indicate had been drifting away from Mr Biden in recent months. If she can combine that with more backing from other minorities and younger voters – Barack Obama’s winning coalition from 2008 and 2012 – it could help her gain ground against Trump in the handful of swing states that will decide this year’s election.

Her background as a prosecutor could also burnish tough-on-crime credentials. While her law-enforcement resume was a liability when she ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019 – and led to derisive “Kamala is a cop” attacks from the left – it could help her in a campaign against Trump.

The vice-president has also been the administration’s point person on abortion, which has proven to be one of the most potent issues for motivating the Democratic base in recent elections. Mr Biden, by contrast, sometimes had been a reluctant advocate on the issue, hampered by a past record of supporting some limits on the procedure.

“I think she reminds suburban women across the country, particularly in those battleground states, of what’s at stake with reproductive rights,” former New York congressman Steve Israel, who headed the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told the BBC’s Americast podcast.

Harris’s vulnerabilities

For all Harris’s potential strengths, there is a reason why some Democrats were initially reluctant to push Mr Biden to step aside, given that his running mate would be the clear successor.

Despite generating Democratic enthusiasm on the subject of abortion, Ms Harris’s record as vice-president has been mixed. Early in the administration, she was set the task of addressing the root causes of the migration crisis at the US-Mexico border. A number of missteps and misstatements – including a ham-handed June 2021 interview with NBC News presenter Lester Holt – damaged her standing and opened her to conservative attacks.

Republicans are already condemning her as the president’s “border czar”, attempting to make her the face of what public opinion polls have found is the Biden administration’s unpopular immigration policies.

“Immigration is a soft spot for Democrats in those battleground areas,” Mr Israel said. “This is a very salient issue for voters living in those suburbs, fairly or unfairly. They believe that our immigration system is not managed strongly enough.”

The Trump campaign will also try to turn the vice-president’s prosecutorial background against her – both by highlighting the former president’s record of enacting criminal justice reform and by attacking her past prosecutorial and parole decisions.

Another Harris vulnerability is her chequered track record as a candidate. In her 2016 Senate bid, she faced only token opposition from Republicans in deeply Democratic California.

Her one solo run for national office – a bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination – ended in ruins. While she surged early, a combination of fumbled interviews, a lack of clearly defined vision and a poorly managed campaign led her to drop out before even the earliest primary contests.