The top contender for the Democratic nomination has won every election she’s entered — in ultramarine California. Yet she’s failed to win a single vote in the Democrats’ 2024 presidential primaries. In 2020, Kamala Harris bowed out before the voters weighed in. That earned her the vice presidency. Now she has President Biden’s endorsement for the presidency. One has to pinch oneself to imagine what she could do if she actually won a vote. 

Not to belittle Ms. Harris’s good fortune. It throws into sharp relief the reticence of Senator Manchin, who this morning told CBS News that he will not throw his hat in the ring for the top job. The West Virginian declared that “I’m not running for office” and “I don’t need that in my life.” Yet Mr. Manchin lamented that the Democrats were not going to “see a vigorous” contest instead of a coronation.

Mr. Manchin, who represented West Virginia in the Senate as a Democrat for nearly a decade and a half before quitting the party, knows a thing or two about persuading the unconvinced. That brings into even greater focus the missed opportunity of his eschewing a challenge to Ms. Harris, the kind of opening that arises once a generation — if that. Ms. Harris solves the Democrats’ problem with age, but not, we’ve observed, with policy. 

A challenger to Ms. Harris would not just give Democratic voters a real choice. It would also offer the party a chance to course correct from its leftward swerve. President Trump and Senator Vance are hunting for votes in the middle — witness the 45th president’s denunciation of Project 2025, which he compared to the works of “the radical left.” The Times predicts that a “Harris economy could prove more progressive than ‘Bidenomics.’” 

The Mountain State maven seems to understand the point. He at one point this week was, as our story this morning put it, calling on the Democratic Party to hold a “mini-primary” to choose the nominee, instead of just anointing Vice President Harris. He added that “The Democratic Party has gone too far left. The Republican Party has coalesced around Donald Trump on the far right. In the middle, where do you go?”

Ms. Harris does possess advantages. She alone stands to inherit the money raised by Mr. Biden. Early indications are that donors are opening their wallets for her. The Democratic machers who have yet to endorse her — Senator Schumer, say, or President Obama — appear unlikely to come out for a maverick. That camarilla also sought to push Mr. Biden across the finish line, a plan that backfired. Speaker Pelosi supports Ms. Harris.  

The appetite for a “Biden 2.0,” as Trump’s campaign calls Ms. Harris, appears to be limited, to judge by approval ratings. It seems that old wine in new barrels is, for Democrats, a risky strategy. Better to throw the race open. For that to happen, though, contenders would be required. And why not? There are already whispers that the Trump camp is on its back foot and that the choice of Mr. Vance was designed to counter Mr. Biden. 

Among those who could hope for a challenge to Ms. Harris is Prime Minister Netanyahu. NBC News reports that she “appears more willing” than Mr. Biden “to publicly criticize” Israel’s leader. That, NBC quotes a source in the administration as suggesting, could “help her numbers” among voters who want to see Washington turn against Jerusalem. She may surprise, but Mr. Manchin must figure there’s scant room for centrist Democrats.