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For the past year, the presidential campaign seemed destined to be a monotonous slog featuring two candidates, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, that\u00a0voters didn\u2019t really want<\/a>.<\/p>\n But that all changed on a quiet Sunday afternoon just 107 days before the election.<\/p>\n Biden\u2019s decision to\u00a0drop out of the race<\/a>\u00a0and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor resets the campaign with a swiftness that is unparalleled in modern American politics.<\/p>\n Once a contest between two elderly white men, the election will likely force Trump to contend with the much younger Harris, who was consolidating support among Democrats and would be\u00a0the first woman of color atop a major party\u2019s ticket.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIt shakes things up entirely,\u201d said Dan Pfeiffer, a former adviser to President Barack Obama. \u201cIt turns everything on its head.\u201d<\/p>\n The crumbling of Biden\u2019s reelection effort, which began with\u00a0his shaky debate performance<\/a>\u00a0last month, has left both parties scrambling. Although no one has stepped forward to challenge Harris for the Democratic nomination, she still faces the unprecedented challenge of taking over a campaign only four weeks before the party gathers in Chicago for its convention.<\/p>\n At the same time, Trump must pivot his focus to Harris after designing his campaign for a rematch with Biden. Trump\u2019s team claimed they were\u00a0prepared to run against the vice president<\/a>, and Republicans stepped up their criticism during the party\u2019s convention last week in Milwaukee.<\/p>\n However, Trump himself expressed disappointment that \u201cwe have to start all over again\u201d with the campaign. He mused on Truth Social, his social media platform, that Republicans should be \u201creimbursed for fraud\u201d for all the money they\u2019ve spent running against Biden.<\/p>\n The shakeup in the presidential race came after an extraordinarily tumultuous month in American politics, starting with an unusually early debate between Biden and Trump.<\/p>\n The June 27 showdown catalyzed concerns that Biden, 81, was too old for a second term.<\/p>\n As Democrats pushed to dislodge him from the top of the ticket,\u00a0Trump barely survived<\/a>\u00a0an assassination attempt on July 13 during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n Then, on Sunday, Biden bowed to pressure within his party to step aside. He swiftly endorsed Harris, who is the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president.<\/p>\n The breakneck developments left the political world gasping for breath as everyone tried to reorient themselves to a new reality.<\/p>\n Trump, who is 78, will almost certainly be the oldest candidate on the ballot after spending months battering Biden over his age. Harris is only 59, giving her a claim to representing generational change that Biden could never fulfill.<\/p>\n In addition, Harris is a former prosecutor, providing a fresh opportunity to assail Trump\u2019s status as a convicted felon after being\u00a0found guilty in a hush money trial<\/a>\u00a0earlier this year.<\/p>\n She is also the daughter of immigrants, raised by a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, a background that heightens the contrast with Trump, who has used racist, sexist and nativist rhetoric.<\/p>\n Harris tried to summarize their differences in a campaign advertisement five years ago, when she was seeking the Democratic nomination before dropping out and joining Biden\u2019s campaign as his running mate.<\/p>\n \u201cIn every possible way, this is the anti-Trump,\u201d the narrator said. \u201cSo if that\u2019s what you\u2019re looking for in your next president, there\u2019s really only one \u2014 Kamala.\u201d<\/p>\n The leaders of Trump\u2019s campaign dismissed the dramatic change, saying, \u201cKamala Harris is just as much of (a) joke as Biden is.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey own each other\u2019s records, and there is no distance between the two,\u201d said a statement from senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles.<\/p>\n Immigration will remain a key line of attack against Democrats, especially because Harris was tasked by Biden to work on migration issues early in the administration. Republicans claimed she was appointed as a \u201cborder czar\u201d and blamed her for unauthorized crossings.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re still going to run the Gotham City playbook with an added dose of racism and sexism,\u201d said Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster. \u201cAnd let\u2019s not pretend that those things don\u2019t matter, because they do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n