With Joe Biden’s inevitable exit and the anointment of Kamala Harris as the presumptive nominee, the key question is whether the Democratic Party has fixed its problem and made a wise move.

For sure, this sudden turn of events has provided Democrats a jolt of fervor and rejuvenation. Not only was Biden losing to Donald Trump by every measure and in every forecast, he had further consigned his party to the emotional doldrums. His campaign looked to be a long trudge to a sad end.

Harris has made the hearts of Democratic diehards sing again. The party’s cash registers are ringing. Excitement is back. So, too, is the belief in victory.

Is that confidence well placed? Did the party’s powers-that-be, starting with the now-lame-duck president, act strategically in passing the baton to Harris absent any real process or competition?

Traumatized by Biden’s frozen incapacity in the late June debate with Trump and by his withering prospects, Democrats were disinclined to undertake anything remotely contested or messy.

As their ship sank in the middle of the ocean, Democrats were all too eager to attach to the first available lifeboat. Even as they may have jumped without first checking whether that craft is sea-worthy.

To the extent a reset is possible in a deeply divided country in which most voters long ago picked up sides, Harris’s instant candidacy offers that. She immediately removes her party’s heaviest anchor dragging it down, that being Biden’s age and frailty.

Some contrasts set up quite well for Harris. The matters of age and vigor, to go along with that of generational change, shift decidedly in her favor. Trump now becomes the lumbering old man, stiff of gait, syntax-challenged on his own, and litigating the past.

His 92-minute, self-indulgent mess of an acceptance speech in Milwaukee was hardly the mark of a spry politician at the top of his game.

The gender match-up is self-evident. Perhaps Harris will find success where others have not in making Trump answer for his insults to women and far worse. Moreover, as pushback to the Dobbs decision produced an encouraging result for Democrats in the 2022 off-year elections, Harris should be far more able than Biden to mobilize passionate pro-choice partisans.

Of course, there is also the already much-discussed juxtaposition of prosecutor and felon. Trump has more than held his own politically as indictments and convictions have piled up. Could Harris be situated to make Trump pay a political price where others have failed?

However, make no mistake in that Harris enters the contest with significant vulnerabilities as well. Even if she was inclined to distance herself from the Biden record, and she is not, that would be impossible.

The Biden-Harris White House may tout major legislative triumphs, but voters remember the impacts of inflation, global conflicts and runaway illegal immigration. The rap on Harris as the “border czar” is not totally fair as Biden had specifically tasked her with addressing the root causes of mass migration. But perception is what it is, and this political wound will bleed.

Beyond that, Harris is very much a product of left-leaning, one-party California, San Francisco in particular. Color me dubious that scenes of rampant homelessness and breakdowns of law and order, the latter being Harris’s California calling card, will play well in states where this election will be decided.

It also remains to be seen whether the political instincts she honed in that ultra-liberal incubator will resonate in far-removed locales. And Harris comes with her own reputation for making hash of the language and producing some infamous word salads.

America’s political divide is near even. Every expectation is that this will be a supremely close election one more time. The potential still exists for another split decision between the popular vote and the electoral college. Of course, that latter scorecard is the only tally that matters.

Democrats had better hope that the election is close as if there is to be any decisive spread, it is likely to be in the other direction. That is what was confronting Biden with a handful of reliably blue states newly in play.

While Harris has already revived Democratic spirits and should succeed in largely consolidating the party’s base, her path to the Oval Office remains a narrow one.

It is hard, make that virtually impossible, for Democrats to conjure up a winning electoral college formula that does not include all the states carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016 plus the Rust Belt trio of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

To be clear, Rust Belt sweep must include all three of those states. Two out of three will not do the trick, absent some lower odds win in North Carolina, Georgia or Arizona.

This election will be settled between Eau Claire, Wisconsin to the west and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania on the east. Everything else is secondary and the Democrats’ margin for error is approximately zero.

All of which begs the questions of whether Harris is the best-situated nominee and whether the party’s rush to crown her was prudent efficiency or reckless folly.

Assign me to the latter category.

Without a doubt, some kind of abbreviated, open process involving maybe three to five candidates, certainly including Harris, and leading to a decision-making convention in late August would have entailed risk.

But with risk often comes reward. Such an unprecedented series of forums and an open convention would have captured the nation’s attention and imagination. Trump rose through reality television and this could have been the corollary. If Harris emerged on top a few weeks from now, she would be legitimized and have proven her mettle.

Contests beat coronations. Given that Democrats intend to make this election largely about the security of our democratic institutions, it hardly helps to have the nominee selected in what passes today for a smoke-filled backroom.

Just perhaps, such a process may have landed on a stronger alternative. Two names rise to the top of such a list of unconsidered possibilities – Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

Take a look again at the battleground map of Democratic have-to-have states and consider if Whitmer or Shapiro, or possibly a ticket of both of them, would have been a stronger move than a largely untested, often underperforming veep from the rather foreign land of California.

Eric Sondermann is a Colorado-based independent political commentator. He writes regularly for ColoradoPolitics and the Gazette newspapers. Reach him at EWS@EricSondermann.com; follow him at @EricSondermann