President Biden’s decision to withdraw was probably a foregone conclusion a week ago.

Major donors and trusted advisers had made their preference known. So had many members of the House and the Senate. These are people whose political identity was formed in the same political context as Biden’s. They believe that the system works. They believe that dedicated public servants supersede mercurial electoral politics. Whether you agree with their assessment of politics, this nation needed an institutionalist in 2020. Biden was the most institutional candidate.

This election is a referendum on the kind of politics that made Biden: Can the system still be trusted to work?

That is a question about the future, not the past. Ultimately, neither Donald Trump nor Biden represent the future. In Trump’s case, he is a stopgap for a clearly articulated Republican strategy to rework every American institution, in some ways, by destroying those institutions. In Biden’s case, he does not look like a candidate who could counter the threats Trump and the Republicans pose to this country.

Vice President Kamala Harris is the only choice to replace him. That now makes her the leader of the Democrats’ future. The Democratic National Convention is not the time to litigate her ability to take over for Biden. The time to do that was in 2020.

This election is not a competition between two equally matched candidates with merely competing visions for America. It is a race between a man who intends to be king and the party that stands in his way. The only conversation Democrats should be having with voters at this point is that a second Trump presidency will remake this country as we know it.