After brilliantly navigating three weeks of chaos, Harris became Democrats’ presumptive nominee overnight on a blue wave of money and coconut memes.
Never has an NCAA Sports Day been so widely and breathlessly covered as it was on Monday.
And never has it been clearer that Vice President Kamala Harris, now the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, did not just fall out of a coconut tree.
With President Biden recovering from COVID-19, the task of honoring top college athletes from across the country fell to Harris, who performed the same duty last year with much less fanfare.
This year, of course, the event occurred the day after Biden announced he was ending his reelection campaign and endorsed Harris as the party’s replacement candidate for president.
Cue general insanity.
This made Sports Day, by logistics rather than intent, the first time Harris spoke publicly since that dramatic, and historic, turn of events. Suddenly, a low-key get-together, which included a series of brief remarks and a picnic, was the subject of breaking-news alerts as the world’s eyes, and news cameras, were focused on the White House steps.
But anyone who thought Harris would use the moment to talk up her presidential campaign, including many of the pundits who suggested as much, were sorely disappointed.
The very worst thing Harris could have done was to make that moment about her. And so she did not.
Harris spoke poignantly, and briefly, about Biden, whose presidential accomplishment she called “unmatched in modern history.” “I am a firsthand witness that every day, our president Joe Biden fights for the people,” she said, “and we are deeply, deeply grateful for his service to our nation.”
And then she spoke about the athletes. Even though Harris could become this country’s first female president just as women’s sports have finally begun to get the respect they deserve, this was not the time nor the platform for politicking.
