It took Kamala Harris about 24 hours to lock up the Democratic nomination.

By Monday afternoon in the US, every serious challenger for Joe Biden’s spot at the top of the ticket had endorsed Harris.

Gretchen Whitmer said she was “fired up” to back Harris and to serve as the vice president’s campaign co-chair. Trump, Whitmer gleefully noted, is “a convicted felon who stokes violence, overturned Roe and drove our economy into the ground.” (Trump would only disagree with part of that assessment.)

JB Pritzker, a long shot anyway, said Harris “possess the skills, strength and character to lead this country.” Pritzker famously despises Trump. With the holiest of holy passion. On Monday, Pritzker called Trump a “congenital liar” who’s “liable for sexual assault.” That actually counted as light criticism from Pritzker.

Gavin Newsom endorsed Harris on Sunday and so did Josh Shapiro.

More important than any of those endorsements was the nod Harris received from Nancy Pelosi who, in the final analysis, was responsible for pushing Biden out of the race. We learned, over the past 48 hours, who really wields power on the Democratic side. As it turns out, it wasn’t Joe Biden.

Pelosi isn’t a Harris “superfan,” per se, but throwing her weight behind Newsom (i.e., the other California contender), would’ve created a highly contentious environment, and Newsom’s rapid endorsement of Harris was an early read on Pelosi’s intentions.

“We must… charge forward to… enthusiastically elect Kamala Harris as the next President of the United States,” Pelosi said Monday. As of this writing, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries hadn’t formally endorsed Harris, but with Pelosi on board, their nods were a foregone conclusion.

Harris quickly secured the Clinton nod. The Obama endorsement was surely on the way too. The Michelle Obama pipe dream was dead once the Democratic leadership lined up behind Harris. If there was any chance (any chance at all) that she intended to run, some of the high-profile endorsements would’ve waited.

There’s a lot of speculation that Republicans may try to challenge the nomination, which is to say — and I laugh every time I read this — sue to keep Biden in the race. These are the same people who swear Biden’s unfit to serve, and yet they want the courts to force him to run.

Any such effort, should it materialize, would be laughed out of court in a sane world, but remember: We forked off into a parallel universe eight years ago this November. And it’s not lost on the GOP that any case which goes before the Supreme Court will get a sympathetic ear.

I’ll just leave that there for now, but the fact that it’s even in the discussion speaks to my point over the weekend: The Trump campaign was designed exclusively to beat one man. And it worked. Too well. That man gave up three months early. Trump really (really) wanted Biden to hang in there, and not just because he was flailing. Trump wanted to avenge his 2020 loss. Now he won’t get that chance.

Starting Monday, team Trump had to launch an entirely new campaign. Every potent line of personal attack is dead. By and large, Trump can use the same policy attacks against Harris that he would’ve used against Biden, but that’s not his forte. He likes personal insults, not policy debates.

When it comes to Harris, Trump will need to tread at least a little bit carefully on the personal attack front. Republicans have done a good job wooing minority voters. Trump won’t want to squander that by stumbling into some kind of cringeworthy trope or stereotype about black women. Which is absolutely something he’d do. Quite possibly without even realizing it.

Without elaborating, Trump’s the kind of guy who doesn’t understand that, as a white person, there are certain things you can’t say about black people in the presence of other black people even if those black people love you. No white person’s exempt from that dynamic. Trump probably thinks he’s the exception. He’s not. He may be the exception to every other rule — including, apparently, the rule of law — but not that one. There are no exceptions to that rule.

Harris delivered her first remarks as de facto Democratic nominee on Monday at a White House event for college athletes. She lavished praise on Biden, but made it clear the party’s turning the page. “We are deeply grateful for his service to our nation,” she said, speaking about Joe almost in the past tense.