But there’s another way to look at it: the fact that this race is essentially a coin flip is a miracle. If Joe Biden had not stepped aside and endorsed Harris at the end of July, he would have lost re-election. I don’t even feel obligated to explain why, since Biden’s certain defeat to Trump may be the only thing everyone in Washington agrees on. Instead, Democrats now have a fair chance to stop him — and, by extension, halt the rise of American authoritarianism. In the excruciating hours ahead, that should be a source of comfort, if not relief.

You can quibble about the campaign Harris has chosen to run — and I’ve quibbled plenty — but she has done something extraordinary in the last 100 days, taking a race the Democrats were going to lose and making it winnable. In early spring, as it became clear that voters deemed Biden incapable of serving a second term, Harris — an unpopular vice president whose only national campaign in 2020 had been a short-lived disaster — was viewed with enormous suspicion at best . . Before Biden collapsed in his only debate against Trump this cycle, many feared Harris would do even worse than Biden if she became the nominee.

After that collapse, however, it was clear that Harris was the only plausible replacement for Biden — and that, given the risk (and even likelihood) of a Trump landslide, any Democrat was preferable to the sitting president. There was no time for a conventional primary. Any attempt by the Democratic National Committee to organize an expedited procedure would have caused division and controversy, while the party simply could not afford it. Harris, as flawed as she was, had to be the choice. While she has not run a perfect campaign by any means, she has exceeded expectations and pacified most people who doubted her ability to unite the party.