<em>The Atlantic Daily</em>: Lefties Hope Kamala Harris Will Come Around

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.

The vice presidency sometimes gets a bad rap. But put aside the pop-culture trope of the office as toothless, and its occupants as mere figureheads: My colleague Christian Paz argued last month that Joe Biden’s vice president could be the most powerful in history.

We know now that, should Biden win in November, that person would be Kamala Harris.

Here are three things to consider as you weigh Harris’s historic bid—the first ever by a woman of color—to be the first female vice president:

1. Her nomination marks a turning point for Democrats.

“By selecting Harris, Biden has positioned the Democratic Party for a profound generational and demographic transition,” Ronald Brownstein argues.

2. Lefties are hoping she’ll prove pliable.

“They think that … Harris could be malleable, a potential vice president they can push in their ideological direction,” Elaine Godfrey, a staff writer covering politics, reports.  

3. Harris will live in the shadow of pop-culture depictions of the vice presidency.