“Ruffles and Flourishes” played at the start of a White House event on Monday, but in a musical reminder of the transformed presidential race, the blaring horns were not followed by “Hail to the Chief.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, not a still-recovering Joe Biden, walked onto a South Lawn stage one day after the president ended his bid for a second term and threw his support behind her. Democrats continued to rally around Harris — in the forms of donations and endorsements — to be the party’s presidential nominee, shaking up a race in which Biden had been losing ground to former President Donald Trump.
“It changes everything about the campaign. It’s a whole new day,” Ivan Zapien, a former DNC official and Senate aide, said in a Monday email. “It’s a boxing match on top of the Millenium Falcon in ‘Star Wars’ as Chewbacca hits warp speed.”
