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any deeper rot that might have contributed to his as-
cent. Biden believed most voters simply wanted rec-
onciliation after four years of combat, that they craved
decency, dignity, experience and competence. “What
I got most criticized for was, I said we had to unite
America,” he says. “I never came off that message.”
Biden had the vision, set the tone and topped the
ticket. But he also recognized what he could not offer
on his own, what a 78-year-old white man could never
provide: generational change, a fresh perspective,
and an embodiment of America’s diversity. For that,
he needed Kamala Harris: California Senator, former
district attorney and state attorney general, a biracial
child of immigrants whose charisma and tough ques-
tioning of Trump Administration officials electrified
millions of Democrats. The Vice President has never
before been a woman, or Black, or Asian American. “I
will be the first, but I will not be the last,” Harris says
in a separate interview. “That’s about legacy, that’s
about creating a pathway, that’s about leaving the
door more open than it was when you walked in.”
The Democratic ticket was an unlikely partner-
ship: forged in conflict and fused over Zoom, divided
by generation, race and gender. They come from dif-
ferent coasts, different ideologies, different Americas.
But they also have much in common, says Biden: work-
ing-class backgrounds, blended families, shared val-
ues. “We could have been raised by the same mother,”
he says. In an age of tribalism, the union aims to dem-
onstrate that differences don’t have to be divides.
No oNe kNows the nature of this type of partner-
ship better than Biden, who lived for eight years in
the house Harris is about to move into. He has made
the same commitment to her that he extracted from
Barack Obama: that the VP will be the last person in
the room after meetings, consulted on all big deci-
sions. The two communicate every day, by telephone
or text message, and Harris has offered welcome ad-
vice on Cabinet selections. “The way that he refers to
himself and her when he speaks, he’s already mak-
ing his biggest decisions with her at [his] side,” says
Maya Harris, Kamala’s sister and closest confidant.
Picking her as running mate “obviously has historic
significance,” she says, “but clearly it’s been a choice
that’s not about symbolism. It’s substantive.”
Together, they offered restoration and renewal in
a single ticket. And America bought what they were
selling: after the highest turnout in a century, they
racked up 81 million votes and counting, the most in
presidential history, topping Trump by some 7 mil-
lion votes and flipping five battleground states.
Defeating the Minotaur was one thing; finding
the way out of the labyrinth is another. A dark winter
has descended, and there will be no rest for the vic-
tors. Trump is waging information warfare against his
own people, the first President in history to openly
subvert the peaceful transfer of power. The country
has reached a grim new milestone: more than 3,000
COVID-19 deaths in one day. Millions of children are
falling behind in their education; millions of parents
are out of work. There is not only a COVID-19 cri-
sis and an economic crisis to solve, but also “a long
overdue reckoning on racial injustice and a climate
crisis,” Harris says. “We have to be able to multitask.”
Given the scale and array of America’s problems,
the question may not be whether this team can solve
them but whether anyone could. U.S. politics has be-
come a hellscape of intractable polarization, plagued
by disinformation and mass delusion. Polling shows
three- quarters of Trump voters wrongly believe the
election was tainted by fraud. After four years of a2020 Person of the Year
Biden campaigns in
New Hampshire on
Feb. 9; his fifth-place
finish in the primary
was a low point,
18 days before his
win in South Carolina