Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris. Two days ago would you have been able to remember much about her, if anything?

Probably not, since she was one of the most ignominious losers in last year's Democratic primaries. She had a strong start both in money and polling when she declared in July 2019, a start the likes of which most outside field candidates could only dream of.

But then she blew it: from that moment her ratings drifted down into the region of rounding errors near the bottom of the chart. Her numbers in the months before her formal candidacy had been of the same dismal order: she started as a political nonentity without support, only to end up as a political nonentity after six months of solid rejection, expensively bought.

At the end of 2019 she took her candidacy round the back of the barn and put it out of its misery, citing 'lack of funding'. 'Lack of support' or even 'general unpopularity' would have been the more honest assessment.

So, despite its many defects, the primary contest had delivered at least one solid result we could all get behind: no one wanted Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate.

Now, eight months after that crash-and-burn moment, Joe Biden has selected her as his running mate for the 2020 presidential election.

If Biden wins she will become Vice President – an office long regarded as a place to park political nonentities, give them a title, pay them a good salary and throw in the sort of pension to which normal people could never aspire.

True, should the President expire in office they are elevated into a role for which they are quite unsuited but one in which they can usually do little damage. Even Lyndon Johnson just continued doing what John F. Kennedy would have done, warmongering, just in larger, Johnson-sized quantities and without the Kennedy charm. But apart from such exceptions, the vice presidency is a job without much possibility for harm.

Except that the normal times in US politics ended some while ago. It is clear to all who have eyes to see and ears to hear that Biden, never one of the great minds in American politics, is in serious mental decline. The question for elderly candidates used to be: 'will the candidate remain compos mentis for the next four years?'; in Biden's case the question is: 'will he make it to November?'.

Biden's(?) choice of running mate is therefore no longer an uninteresting side-show. His choice will sooner or later become President, probably sooner rather than later, and perhaps even very soon after a Biden win in November. In which case, Kamala Harris, the nonentity hardly any Democrat wanted or voted for, would become President.

It is difficult to imagine that Harris will replace Biden as the presidential candidate before the election – that would throw up too many absurdities even for American politics. We might guess that the strategy is to get Biden over the line in November somehow, then take him round the back of the barn at a decent interval after the inauguration. The Democrats appear to have such a pathologically low opinion of Donald Trump's faculties that they may even be gambling on a walkover in November, even with a mental defective as their candidate.

Who knows what will happen? On the occasions that this website's forecasting abilities have been tested they have generally been found to be worthless.

But it really doesn't matter what your political leanings are. In this nadir of democracy, the person with no demonstrable support even among her own nominal political allies will become the President of the United States, the most powerful person etc. etc.

It was managed by a job – and a good job, too!