Kamala has been running for political office for the last 22 years. She’s been holding politically connected jobs since a year after her graduation. She’s a member of a professional political class and like much of its members doesn’t know how to do anything else. Her career as a prosecutor remains a political fiction with little to show for it except, like Buttigieg’s military career, a prop for running for higher office.

In other words, we’re stuck with Kamala.

The vice president has been instructing advisers and allies to keep her options open — whether for a possible 2028 presidential run, or even to run for governor in her home state of California in two years. As Harris has repeated in phone calls, “I am staying in the fight.”