A small development, perhaps, and maybe it's only a parliamentary i-dotting and t-crossing. In the last three days since Joe Biden withdrew, practically everyone in the Democrat establishment has rushed to anoint Kamala Harris as the presumptive presidential nominee. Even with the angry denunciation from Black Lives Matter about the rigged primaries and now a rigged succession, no Democrat seemed interested in rocking the boat by proposing a competition for the slot. 

That makes this announcement from the DNC at least notable:

The Democratic National Convention's rules committee met Wednesday afternoon to adopt a framework to select the party's presidential nominee after President Joe Biden suspended his campaign Sunday.

The newly adopted plan only gives candidates from Thursday to 6 p.m. Saturday to declare their candidacy and gain 300 delegates with no more than 50 from one state to make their case for the virtual roll call by Tuesday.

The short deadline all but guarantees Vice President Kamala Harris will clinch the nomination, as she already has secured pledged support from more than the 1,976 delegates needed and does not have any public challengers. Voting on the nomination will likely begin on Aug. 1, however, if there are at least two candidates who qualify, voting will likely begin on Aug. 3.

If no one steps up to challenge Harris, then this is all pro forma. Right now, a challenge seems unlikely at the very least. Every major Democrat in leadership has endorsed her candidacy, and a few of them have made their interest clear in being considered for her running-mate choice. 

But could that change?

Perhaps. As I wrote earlier this evening, Democrats panicked themselves into the Dump Biden project ostensibly over polling erosion since the debate. That's not the real reason, of course; they panicked because the debate exposed their years-long cover-up of Joe Biden's encroaching senility. But the poll erosion told them the jig was up on that conspiracy to defraud American voters, and they needed someone who could at least compete. 

Harris got the nod by default. No one else wanted to jump in, likely for one of two reasons, or maybe both. First: Anointing Harris prevents an open-convention meltdown in Chicago. Second: No one thinks Democrats can withstand Donald Trump in this cycle after his survival and defiance in an assassination attempt less than two weeks ago. And perhaps a third -- that any other candidate would have to assume the burdens of the myriad failures of Biden and Harris in the minds of the voters, and especially the onus of the fraud Democrats conducted on them. 

Byron York wondered last night whether those reasons would hold up for long among the more ambitious Democrats, or among the more anxious:

People from all over the political world were amazed at what Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) called the “lightning quick unification” of the party. No, it was not surprising that the party would endorse its sitting vice president once the president removed himself from the scene. But even with Harris’s skimpy record and low approval ratings, nobody appeared to give supporting her a moment’s thought — they just acted. It would not be an exaggeration to call the move to Harris a stampede.

But if something so momentous can happen so quickly, doesn’t that mean additional momentous changes can happen just as quickly? It is July 23. The Democratic National Convention is scheduled to begin on Aug. 19. That’s 27 days away. Remember how much has changed in just the 10 days since July 13 — the Trump attempted assassination, the Republican National Convention, Biden’s withdrawal, and the Democratic embrace of Harris. Is there any reason to believe that things will settle down now?

More specifically, there is plenty of time for Democrats to rethink their rush to Harris. How will she do on the campaign trail? What will the polls show once enough time has passed for a reliable measurement of public opinion? How will Harris wear on voters? By the time Democrats meet in Chicago, there might be great happiness with Harris. On the other hand, there might be growing doubts.

There may well be growing doubts created by that unseemly rush to the Harris Anointment. And those doubts could be the lack of real response to her candidacy in the first blush of new polling in the race, as I outlined earlier. Some in the media have spun movement in polls that show little to none at all in the numbers, not even those conducted in the last two days after Biden withdrew on Sunday and endorsed his vice-president for the nomination. 

RCP's aggregation shows seven polls in which respondents got contacted on Sunday or later. Trump leads five of those and ties in another (Yahoo News), while Harris only leads in one -- the latest iteration of the Reuters/Ipsos series that also had Biden in a tie with Trump in their first survey after the debate. There is no swell of enthusiasm for Harris so far, and that's true across the board. The best that can be said is that Harris may have reversed some of the post-debate erosion, but not all of it, despite being a well-known enough alternative that pollsters have conducted 21 surveys since the debate that posed a Trump-Harris election question. 

The DNC announcement shows that delegates and leadership don't have plenty of time to reconsider the rush to The Anointment, but they do have three days. If polls continue to show a lack of a polling bump, will the party cognoscenti reconsider their endorsements of Harris? If she makes an embarrassing stumble on the campaign trail tomorrow or Friday, will we see Byron's "buyer's remorse" scenario suddenly emerge?

Maybe not; perhaps no one really does want to run against Trump. Democrats with presidential aspirations may still find Harris a convenient scapegoat and 2024 nothing better than a reset for the party. But if Harris isn't cutting it by Saturday, it may leave the door open for someone to step up and declare that this emperor isn't wearing any clothes, either.