Democrats are in an odd bind. After eight years of the all-consuming effervescence of President Barack Obama, President Joe Biden was the only starched suit capable of saving the party from the radical appeal of the socialist Bernie Sanders and his fellow “Squad” members. But in the heat and delusion of the summer of 2020, Biden beat the identitarians with the fateful promise that he would appoint a black woman as his running mate.

In doing so, he preserved his own hopes for a second term with the threat of mutually assured destruction: In appointing Kamala Harris, the only black woman in the Senate who also happened to flame out of the Democratic presidential primary long before the Iowa caucuses, Biden also ensured that the party could never replace him without her being appointed the immediate successor.

All of which renders Harris’s half-hearted defense of Biden’s first, and likely only, debate against Donald Trump for the 2024 election cycle all the more laughable.

“Yes, there was a slow start,” the former California senator conceded, “but it was a strong finish!”

Anderson Cooper did not seem impressed.

Time after time, Cooper tried to interject as Harris deflected.

“The point has to be performance in terms of what a president does,” Harris said in response to Cooper pointing out that the Biden she sparred against in 2019 was not the same senile creature in Atlanta on Thursday evening.

“The person you saw on the debate stage who for the last 3 1/2 years — up until today—”

Up until today seemed cogent? Coherent? Comforting to the public?

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Harris landed a single actual blow, noting that unlike Trump, who has not been endorsed by former Vice President Mike Pence, Biden is indeed backed by his current understudy. But once again, she could not help but admit Biden led with a “slow start.” She had no excuse, no defense, just a milquetoast genre of negging that admitted Biden’s performance was weak but without distancing herself from his legacy.

Because Harris understands. Her career is inextricably linked with Biden’s. If he chooses to forgo reelection, she is his natural and necessary successor, and should the party try to leapfrog her candidacy, the intersectional coalition would disintegrate.