The New Yorker:

Julie Benko, who hit it big after going on in place of Beanie Feldstein in “Funny Girl,” has a lot of advice for the Vice-President, now that she’s done with waiting in the wings.

By Zach Helfand

One important shift in the Presidential race is that a large chunk of the population recently decided that everything they used to dislike about Kamala Harris they now love. Favorable ratings are up. Negative views are down. Traits that were seen as wacky or amateurish now read as cool and inspiring. Los Angeles Times, 2021: “More than a laugh: Kamala Harris’ is a sound check for a divided country.” Washington Post, last week: “Vice President Harris laughs at 128 beats per minute—the same tempo as some truly excellent dance songs, such as ‘We Found Love’ by Rihanna or Kylie Minogue’s ‘Padam Padam.’ ” What happened? Could it be the understudy effect?

Everybody loves a backup turned star—your Jeremy Lins, or Tom Bradys, or Shirley MacLaines. Just last week, at the Olympics, we got the Pommel Horse Guy, Stephen Nedoroscik, a subdued, spectacled American gymnast who rode the bench until the very last team event. Was he the best competitor? No. But he was the hero. This is bad news for Donald Trump. He has appeared rattled and whiny after the Harris switcheroo, probably because he recognizes a good narrative arc when he sees one. As one Broadway site posted on X while Joe Biden was refusing to exit the race: “Nation Shaking Their Playbills, Hoping a Little Slip Falls Out.”

An American Vice-President is actually more like a standby, who waits in the wings, than an understudy, who at least gets to perform in the chorus. The Vice-President, like a standby, is basically there just for emergencies. She must study and prepare, likely in vain. There’s a part of her that wishes calamity upon the star. (One understudy wrote in Playbill, “I secretly wanted to poison the lead.”) Standbys and V.P.s are both taken for granted and abused. Thomas Marshall, Woodrow Wilson’s Vice-President, felt so worthless that he invited tourists who visited his office to pelt him with peanuts. Someone once interrupted a speech he was giving with an urgent phone call saying that the President had died. 

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