NY Magazine: “The debate on a distanced and plexiglassed stage on Wednesday night will bear little resemblance to the one Kamala Harris and Mike Pence started preparing for earlier this fall. When they began studying up for their Salt Lake City showdown, no one was speaking openly about presidential succession. But with the 74-year-old Donald Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis and hospitalization upending the political universe late last week, it’s safe to bet that the question of preparedness for the top job is now inescapable.”
“If the ex-VP and California senator do prevail in November, though, it’s looking more and more like — even under normal circumstances — Harris is poised to wield a whole new kind of influence as second-in-command. That’s not just because of the virus, or even because Biden seems intent on modeling the shape of her vice-presidency after his own unusually powerful tenure: As a condition of accepting the veep role, the Delaware senator had demanded he serve as Barack Obama’s senior-most adviser. (Biden ran point on Obama’s economic recovery legislation, the U.S. presence in Iraq, and their relationship with Congress — and he has still never tired of reminding anyone who will listen that he was always ‘the last guy in the room’ for Obama’s big decisions.)”