While the debate over Joe Biden’s future has raised many questions, it has made one thing much clearer. It is time for Americans to get used to the idea of President Kamala Harris.

For Democrats who are advocates that their party stay the course with Biden as candidate, one of the leading arguments you will see or hear made these days is that should anything make it impossible for him to continue with the campaign or as president, Harris is fully ready to assume the reins of power. It is a point made with increasing frequency by Biden-Harris supporters on social and other media platforms these days.

A widely-circulated Google document, entitled “Unburdened by What Has Been: The Case for Kamala,” has caused quite the stir among Democrats and on social media. The buzz around the VP may only increase given the distinctly lukewarm-to-negative response to Biden’s ABC News interview Friday night, which, far from reassuring his supporters, has done little to silence calls for him to withdraw from the race.

For her part, Harris has loyally reinforced the image of the strengths of the team by offering strong support for the president and appearing by his side publicly and internally as on last week’s White House staff call to ease fears and solidify a common message concerning the current controversy.

For those who think it is time to move on from Biden, once again, Harris is the leading answer. A recent CNN poll that showed a substantial majority of Americans believe Democrats would have a better chance to beat Trump were they to move on from Biden to another standard bearer, Harris performed slightly better than even Biden in a hypothetical match up with Trump. Other polls have shown similar results.

What is more Harris has many other notable advantages over other candidates. These include, in addition to the fact that she is already Vice President and offers continuity with the current administration, that it would be easiest for her to maintain access to funds raised in the name of the Biden-Harris campaign, that she has strong and growing vocal support from party leaders, and that she is already the acknowledged leader within the administration on some of the issues likely to be most decisive in the campaign such as women’s reproductive freedom.

Indeed, while Harris got off to what was seen by some as a low-key start as Vice President—in part because some close to Biden made what is now acknowledged as a serious error by too tightly limiting her responsibilities during the first years of the administration—in the past year she enjoyed great success taking a much higher profile role.

For those, like me, who have been following her tenure as Vice President closely, this came as little surprise. She had already distinguished herself on a wide range of issues, including by opening up important dialogue with countries at our southern border to reduce immigration flows at the source, being a leading voice for creating a plan for “the day after” in Gaza, actively engaging in generating support among our allies for the administration’s Ukraine policy, engaging actively on next generation technology issues, supporting sounder gun control laws and serving as an exceptionally effective champion on women’s issues and on issues pertaining to communities of color.

Having seen the Vice President in small group settings in which she was being actively questioned on a wide range of issues, it has long been clear to me that she had not only mastered her brief but that she was, especially as she grew more comfortable expressing herself in her own voice, a powerful communicator. She is also able to do something many politicians do not do well—which is listen—while at the same time drawing on the skills she developed as a prosecutor and a Senator to serve as an advocate.

For all the above reasons, it should be obvious that if Biden remains in the race, Harris will have to play a bigger role in the campaign. If he drops out, she among all the people in the world is by far the most likely to be his successor. In fact, right now, of the 333 million people in the United States, she is one of just three with the a substantial possibility of becoming the next president.

This is also due, of course, to the one fact that is ever-present with vice presidents but seldom discussed. She is the next in line to the presidency. The current debate about Biden’s age and health have brought that uncomfortable issue more into open conversation. America has never had a president as old as Biden and the odds are not small that should he be reelected for a term that would be intended to continue until he was 86 years of age, she might temporarily or permanently be called to assume the presidency. This will be a substantial factor in public debates between now and November.

For all these reasons, the supporters of Biden and the Democrats are not the only ones who find themselves seriously weighing Harris’ ability to serve as president. Donald Trump is also now taking telltale shots her, a clear sign that her candidacy is a threat to him. In a leaked video, he is seen attacking her. He also went after her on social media with one of the juvenile nicknames he gives those with the temerity to challenge him and with a snide crack about a relationship she had with a California politician.

Harris is in many ways Trump’s worst nightmare as a rival candidate. He knows that ever since the Dobbs decision, election after election has gone to the Democrats, even in red states. The fact that his administration stripped away fundamental freedoms from women, America’s majority population, is bad enough. Were he to have to run against a woman, one of the country’s most effective communicators on women’s issues, it would surely give her an edge at the ballot box.

Further, it does not help that Trump is not only the man behind the end of Roe v. Wade, but he is also an adjudged rapist and serial sex abuser who has recently been implicated in more horrors by the release of records associated with the case against his friend, pervert, pedophile, sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

In short, Trump is a disgusting pig with the most anti-woman record of any major politician in U.S. history. Running against a woman now would be a disaster for him.

While there are those who may argue against Harris’ candidacy because of the historical misogyny of American voters, that case seems to have faded in recent years. While Trump did beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, it is important to remember she won the popular vote. Further, of course, America finally did elect a woman on a national ticket in 2020—Harris. Then there are all those races post Dobbs that have mobilized women nationwide as an even more effective voting block. And there is, as noted, the fact that since being elected in 2016, Trump has lost a legal case in which a jury concluded that, in the view of the judge in that case, that Trump was a rapist.

Perceptions about Kamala Harris have been evolving, and appreciation for her has been growing for some time now. But the post-debate debate about Biden’s future has dramatically accelerated those reassessments and forced people to reckon with Harris in an entirely new way.

If Biden remains in the race, the Vice President will have to play a much bigger role in the campaign. Inevitably, given that discussions about his age will remain central from now until election day, consideration of her role as a potential successor will over the next few months grow even more intense. If he drops out, of course, she is the one most likely to be the Democratic nominee for president.

If Biden wins, given his age, there will inevitably be a sense of fragility that would weight her vice presidency with a relevancy the job has seldom had. If Harris runs, given Trump’s grotesque defects and her strengths, she has a very good chance of winning.

Even if Biden does not win, Kamala Harris will remain atop the very short list of potential Democratic candidates for president in 2028. (Since Truman, every Democratic vice president but one has ultimately become the party’s presidential candidate.) Which means that the prospect and promise of a Kamala Harris presidency is likely to be with us for a very long time.