Kamala Harris arrived at the Munich Security Conference earlier this month with no good news to share with her European counterparts. The sixty-billion-dollar security package for Ukraine that President Joe Biden had promised was stalled in the House of Representatives, where the Republican Speaker, Mike Johnson, had sent the chamber into a two-week recess without scheduling a floor vote. And then came the news that Alexei Navalny, the charismatic Russian opposition leader, had died in prison. While awaiting official confirmation, Harris said, at the top of her remarks, “Whatever story they tell, let us be clear: Russia is responsible.”

As she laid out the stakes of Ukraine’s fight against Russia, she laid into Republicans who “embrace dictators” and ignore the United States’ commitments to its allies. “Let me be clear,” she said, tapping her fingers on the lectern. “That world view is dangerous, destabilizing, and, indeed, shortsighted. That view would weaken America and would undermine global stability and undermine global prosperity. President Biden and I, therefore, reject that view.” She went on to make a campaign-style list of the Administration’s accomplishments and ambitions.

If Biden wins reëlection, he will turn eighty-six before he leaves office. An ABC News/Ipsos survey found that eighty-six per cent of Americans think that he’s too old to serve another term. That poll was conducted just after the report from the special counsel looking into Biden’s handling of classified documents called him a “well-meaning elderly man” with “diminished faculties.” Should Biden win again, a Harris Administration is not out of the question and, with more than half of Americans viewing her unfavorably—her ratings are even lower than Biden’s, according to FiveThirtyEight—Harris has work to do.

“People are going to start asking, ‘What am I really voting for here?’ And she’s it,” Scott Jennings, a Louisville-based Republican strategist, told me. Echoing a theme that I’ve heard in interviews with voters in the Midwest, he said, “The average Republican thinks Biden is not in charge of his White House. I suspect the Republicans are going to argue that Biden is running a scam by arguing that he is going to be the President, when no one believes he is going to serve that much longer in office.” That fits with what I recently heard from Republican voters in the swing state of Michigan. A man at a mall in Grand Rapids, who said that he works in construction, cheerfully told me, “We’re Trumpsters.” He said that Harris is “way over her skis,” and that she only has........

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