Democrats’ rush to Kamala Harris bypasses the question of who has the best chance of beating Trump.

The proposition that Kamala D. Harris is the Democratic candidate best suited to defeat Donald Trump is about as believable as the proposition that Joe Biden was mentally and physically equipped to serve as president until 2029.

That is to say: Both are obvious fictions. Democrats coalesced around the fiction of Biden’s acuity during the primary season. Now that Biden has dropped out, they are adopting the fiction that “no one is better” (as California Gov. Gavin Newsom put it on Sunday) to take on Trump in Biden’s stead. Any prospect of a competitive nomination process is evaporating as Democratic politicians — even those previously mooted as possible Biden replacements should he step aside — stampede to Harris.

Does anyone really believe Harris is the Democratic candidate most likely to block another Trump term? Unable to conceal Biden’s infirmity any longer, panicked Democratic leaders forced the president out of the 2024 race. They have a chance to put forward a strong candidate in a high-stakes election that is likely to be close. If they swiftly coronate Harris, Democrats would be elevating one of the weakest candidates available.

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Harris has never shown special political talent. In 2010, she came within one point of losing to Republican Steve Cooley in California’s attorney general race, even as Democrat Jerry Brown defeated Republican Meg Whitman by 13 points for the governorship and Newsom defeated the incumbent GOP lieutenant governor by 11.

As for her run in national politics, Harris’s support quickly cratered in the 2020 Democratic primaries, where she ran to Biden’s left and dropped out early. Her tenure as vice president, substantially defined by a failed foray into immigration policy, was widely considered mediocre even by friendly media — at least until Sunday.

Harris’s service in the Biden administration and avid vouching for the president’s abilities tie her irrevocably to the age deception that just upended the race. Of course, Biden’s mulish insistence on running for a second term almost certainly reflected, in part, the president’s honest assessment of his No. 2.

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Republican attack-ad makers will feast on Harris’s sundry policy pronouncements, especially from her 2020 campaign. “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking” will play on loop in western Pennsylvania. Images of Harris raising her hand on the debate stage when asked if she supported eliminating private health insurance (she later said, amid criticism, that she misunderstood the question) and decriminalizing border........

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