Democrats, for the first time in weeks, have momentum. Kamala Harris has clinched the nomination. Democratic voters are overwhelmingly supportive of her candidacy. She raised $231 million in 24 hours, and just held the biggest rally of the entire campaign. Democrats are energized, unified, and hopeful. There’s an immense outpouring of gratitude to President Biden for passing the torch. And every Democrat can and should feel justifiable pride in our party, which for once actually behaved like a political party—rather than a platform for the ambitions of its individual leaders—by taking action to maximize its chances of electoral success.
Looking backward feels counterproductive at the moment. Between now and November 5, our overwhelming priority needs to be doing everything we can to defeat Donald Trump. But given how close the party came to driving headlong off a cliff—and given how vociferously many Democrats worked to try to prevent the candidate switch that has now energized our party—at some point we will need to have a conversation about how we reached this point. And ultimately Democrats should draw at least one lesson from recent events without marring our newfound party unity: Listen to the people.
The reset we’ve all joyfully experienced in the last few days did not come out of nowhere. There has been an immense amount of quantitative, qualitative, and anecdotal evidence demonstrating an unprecedented well of pent-up energy for a new Democratic nominee. As commentators like Ezra Klein have described in detail, at no point over the past year has the demand for Biden to pass the torch........