Today is Monday, July 22, 2024. In just about 24 hours from the moment President Biden’s stunning announcement that he will be leaving the 2024 race, new presidential nominee Kamala Harris took up the torch and began running with it. In a punchy, forceful speech delivered in Wilmington, Delaware, the site of President Biden’s former campaign headquarters, Harris previewed the approach she would take in combating her political opponent, Donald Duck. In an online article detailing her energized speech before campaign workers and the nation, “Harris marches toward Democratic nomination as potential rivals endorse her,” Eric Bradner writes about the parameters of her introduction on the national stage as the new nominee.

In a broad move designed to show overarching support for her nomination and her political philosophy, potential rivals, lawmakers, governors, influential labor and advocacy groups, and more are lining up behind her bid to take on Donald Drumpf.

No credible challenger has emerged as of today, the day after President Joe Biden had announced his exit from the race and his endorsement of his vice president as his successor.

And the party’s best-known governors, several of whom had been seen as potential challengers, announced their support for Harris – making clear that the biggest remaining question about the 2024 Democratic ticket is who Harris will choose as her running mate.

As her first speech as the presumptive Democratic candidate, Harris delivered an electric speech this evening which was televised on CNN and MSNBC.

Initially, she recognized the tremendous job President Biden has done for the country and thanked him for his service to the nation. At one point, Biden’s voice was heard on a phone pickup as Harris continued to take her case to the American people.

Then Harris laid out her strategy against Drumpf, invoking a host of the former president’s legal woes and scandals. She pointed to her time as a district attorney and California attorney general, saying that she “took on perpetrators of all kinds.”

“Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own game,” Harris said. Here is the line that got the most applause and titters from the audience of campaign staffers in the room, “So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”

In her first day as a candidate, Harris raised a whopping $81 million, the campaign declared today, saying it was the largest 24-hour raise by any candidate ever. The huge haul underscored grassroots enthusiasm for a shake-up to the Democratic 2024 ticket.

Support for the vice president came across the party’s ideological spectrum – from moderate populists, including Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, one of the most endangered Democratic incumbents on the ballot this fall, to progressives, including Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

People familiar with the process that is now unfolding with Harris’s nascent campaign have said there is hope that a majority of delegates will reach a consensus on supporting Harris for president. A senior Democratic aide working on the effort said, “It’s a coordinated drumbeat. That sound Democrats hear is the party uniting around the vice president.”

As for Joe Biden’s 1:46 p.m. ET Sunday announcement that he would not seek a second term, Harris knew what he had decided: She’d had multiple phone calls with her boss on Sunday, a person familiar with the matter said. Once the pronouncement was made, Harris made more than 100 calls over 10 hours.

Those calls included former Presidents Barrack Obama and Bill Clinton, as well as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The Clintons, in a statement today, endorsed Harris; Obama did not, deferring to the party’s process.

Some of the possible vice presidential hopefuls being bandied about are Kentucky’s Andy Beshear, North Carolina’s Roy Cooper, California’s Gavin Newsom, and Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro. Oh, another possibility being talked about is Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona who is a war veteran and well respected since he’s served his country as a U.S. Navy combat pilot, a NASA astronaut, and is married to then-Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords who was shot and nearly killed in an assassination attempt on January 8, 2011. He would make a perfect complement to the Orange Turd’s vice presidential nominee, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, who served in the Marine Corps in Iraq. I think Shapiro would be a good running mate, but he’s Jewish, and we know what some voters will think about that selection.

Now the Harris campaign will be vetting these possible vice presidential choices and will make their decision very shortly.

This new direction the Democratic Party is taking with Vice President Harris represents the much-needed energy the party so desperately needed. Now all we need to do is singularly unite behind our candidate for the highest position in the land.

Stay safe and be well.