OK, could we please dispense with the canonization of Joe Biden?

After months of declining poll numbers and mumbled, unconvincing assurances that he is able to serve four more years as president, the 81-year-old Biden was unceremoniously pushed out of the race by frantic fellow Democrats.

There was nothing courageous or patriotic about Biden's bitterly reluctant decision to give up the ghost. He had been abandoned by fellow Democrats ranging from Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to Barack Obama himself, with whom Biden served eight years as vice president. Obama confidante David Axelrod did Obama's bidding via proxy for weeks on national news, saying Biden had no path to victory in 2024. Et tu, Barack?

The flow to remove Biden as the nominee began earlier this summer with a trickle. Former House Speaker and party matriarch Pelosi went behind the president's back, sounding the alarm in dozens of phone calls to party leaders that the 2024 elections would be a blood bath for Democrats if Biden stayed in the race. The trickle grew to a virtual tsunami that left Biden with no choice but to withdraw last weekend.

While unified Republicans at the party's national convention were urging nominee Donald Trump to "Fight! Fight! Fight!" the fractured Democratic Party was effectively urging Biden to "Quit! Quit! Quit!"

When Lyndon Johnson ended his doomed re-election campaign in1968, he made the announcement in a live, nationally televised broadcast from the White House. Embarrassed and angry by the Democrats' betrayal of him after more than a half-century of party loyalty, a frail Biden couldn't even face the American people. He announced his withdrawal from his Delaware beach house last Sunday afternoon with a post on X.

"He's really pissed off," one party insider told NBC News the day of the announcement, noting that Biden still believed he could defeat Trump again this year. Public and party polling said otherwise, though, and the die was cast.

Fellow Democrats, trying to make lemonade from a political lemon, praised Biden's "patriotism" and "courage" for putting his party and his country before himself. Malarkey!

Biden was the last member of his own party to recognize he would lose to Trump. He didn't want his legacy tarnished by a humiliating loss in November that could also flip the U.S. Senate to Republicans and widen the GOP's narrow majority in the House. If he'd really been concerned about the party and the nation, he'd have recognized months ago what everyone outside his own family already knew — that the gig was up and that he should pass the baton.

The logical choice for the nomination now is Vice President Kamala Harris, who in recent weeks has been walking an awkward tightrope between embracing her role as Biden's running mate and that of his heir apparent. Biden endorsed Harris shortly after withdrawing from the race, but with his approval ratings at record lows, he has more likely applied a kiss of death than a helpful endorsement.

One upside to Harris as the Democratic nominee is her relative youth (she's 59), and exclusive access to the nearly $100 million in cash that the Biden-Harris ticket had in hand at the time of the announcement. That number swelled when major party donors opened the spigots with tens of millions more shortly after Harris's anointment.

And who better than Harris to underscore the contrast between her party's pro-choice stance on abortion and the less popular pro-life stance in the Republican platform? As a former prosecutor, she will also highlight Trump's felony convictions and impending criminal trials.

Democrats are also heartened by polls showing Harris running better than Biden, especially in battleground states, and neck-and-neck against Trump overall. She is even running ahead of Trump in some polls during the honeymoon period she's enjoying as the new darling of liberal media. Mother Theresa never had it so good.

As the first Black/Asian woman to seek the presidency (she's the daughter of a Jamaican father and Indian mother), she will also shore up her party's sagging numbers among minorities and solidify its female support.

The honeymoon may be short-lived, however, as Harris will come in for a ferocious GOP bombardment linking her to Biden, the least popular president since Jimmy Carter. The most conspicuous assignment of her term as vice president was as Biden's "border czar." Trump, his running mate J.D. Vance, and their proxies will have a field day with the border issue at Harris's expense as she didn't lift a finger to clean up the mess there.

And more than anyone except the Bidens themselves, Harris continued to insist until the very end that Biden was alert, engaged and cogent, even when what we saw and heard most days told a different story.

Harris's jumbled word salads and weird propensity for laughter in serious settings will also be fodder for Republican advertising. And when she ran for president in 2020, she was one of the earliest to drop out with a 3.4 percent showing in the polls and an empty war chest.

Some Democrats argue that Govs. Gavin Newsom of California, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Wes Moore of Maryland, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, or Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg would be stronger candidates than Harris.

Some of those probably would be stronger candidates, but who was going to break the news to the party's Black and female supporters? Instead, they will be on the list of prospective running mates.

Meanwhile, after the horror of the narrowly failed assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally, Trump emerged from that episode not only alive, but almost heroic — albeit briefly.

Bravery isn't a term normally associated with someone who used bone spurs to avoid military service in Vietnam. However, Trump showed grit and guts moments after the shots were fired when — face bloodied from a bullet wound to his ear — he rose above his Secret Service detail, raised his fist defiantly, and urged his audience to "Fight! Fight! Fight!" In response, the crowd roared its approval, chanting "USA! USA! USA!" In the ensuing days, tens of millions of Americans would see scary, but inspiring replays of the shooting. Eat your heart out, Steven Spielberg.

The gravity of it all aside, Hollywood itself couldn't have scripted this any better. In fact, some Democrats and media loons crassly suggested the attempt on Trump's life was staged. Let them suggest that to the family of Corey Comperatore, who died heroically in the attack while shielding his family from the bullets.

Predictably, though, Trump quickly squandered any goodwill from the near-miss only five days earlier. In his rambling acceptance speech at the raucous Republican National Convention, he lambasted Biden and continued to repeat the false, badly worn claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

So much for unifying the country. Now, on with what promises to be an historic, lively, expensive and very nasty race for president.

Bill Stanley, a former reporter at The Day, is a retired vice president of Lawrence + Memorial Hospital.