If Biden drops out, the vice president can make the campaign about Trump’s radical plans.

As of this writing, President Biden hasn’t said he would step away from the 2024 campaign. Democrats nevertheless seem poised to move on. In multiple appearances, including TV interviews and meetings with Democratic lawmakers, Biden has not convinced them he is capable of winning the race, in large part because the race has become about him — his age, his health, his capacity. Each appearance becomes a “Perils of Pauline” moment in which supporters gird themselves for a gaffe or stumble. A race that was supposed to be about Donald Trump is now about Biden’s infirmities.

So what would the race look like if Biden were not the nominee?

As a preliminary matter, the notion that someone without the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris campaign operation — and without foreign policy experience, vetting on the national stage or the advantage of running on an incumbent’s record — could jump the line ahead of the vice president to take the nomination beggars belief.

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A random White governor with none of those advantages is supposed to be introduced to the American people, galvanize the party and defeat all competitors — all while displacing the first African American and Asian American female vice president? Beltway pundits can spin all the scenarios they like, but if Harris is not the nominee, a Democratic Party meltdown is nearly certain.

So let’s assume that Harris would head the ticket. What then? She could make this a very different race in multiple ways.

First, the 59-year-old, fit, energetic Harris would shed the party’s burdens of Biden’s age and health. Nearly 20 years younger than Trump (who would be 82 at the end of a second term), she would finally move the country past the baby boomer generation and embody a fresh, younger generation of Americans. Without Biden attracting questions about his physical and mental fitness, perhaps the media might finally focus on Trump’s unhinged rants, compulsive lying and utter lack of policy knowledge.

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Second, instead of a referendum on Biden personally, Harris would shift the campaign to being about making a choice: between the Biden administration’s successful, economically productive, forward-looking, inclusive record, and the scary, paranoid and authoritarian vision set out in Trump speeches and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which might guide a second Trump administration. Harris could ask whether Americans want:

• Technical experts in the departments and agencies who have served under presidents of both parties undertaking research, making rules and enforcing regulations on everything from safe drugs to securities law to clean air and water or a government in which 50,000 handpicked loyalists, not hired for expertise but for fidelity to........
  

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