President Biden’s beach house in Rehoboth, Del., sits on a marshy cove just blocks from the Atlantic Ocean. The house serves as a retreat for Biden, a place to recharge, reflect and be surrounded by his family. And it was there, on Saturday night, that Biden finally decided he had gone as far as he could in his run for a second term.
The 81-year-old spent that day recovering from COVID-19, his voice still hoarse and his words, when he spoke, occasionally interrupted by a loose cough. Chief of Staff Jeff Zients updated him on some economic news, and his homeland security adviser, Liz Sherwood-Randall, updated him on the investigation into how the Secret Service allowed a gunman to come within firing range of his ex -political opponent. President Donald Trump the weekend before.
But at the end of the day he knew the time had come to face the pressing question of his political future. Republicans had just wrapped up their convention in Milwaukee on Thursday, firmly united in support of Trump and ready to make concerns about Biden’s fitness for a second term a centerpiece of their election strategy going forward. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, could not have appeared more discordant, with more calls for Biden to quit emerging over the weekend as polls showed him falling further and further behind Trump.
The president gathered at his beach house his deputy chief of staff, Annie Tomasini, his congressional whisperer, Steve Ricchetti, and the guardian of his political voice, Mike Donilon, as well as first lady Jill Biden and her senior adviser, Anthony Bernal, according to several people familiar with the President’s deliberations.
He told that small group that he had made the historic decision to drop out of the race less than four months before Election Day, propelling his party into uncharted waters. They spent the night crafting their statement and planning a way forward. But this surprising news was kept secret until the next day.
At noon on Sunday, Biden called Vice President Kamala Harris to say he intended to step down from the top of the ticket and support her. He soon read Zients, his chief of staff, and then broke the news to Jen O’Malley Dillon, his campaign chair, who has spent the last few days assuring donors, senators, members of Congress, the press and the president’s allies that Biden wasn’t going anywhere. She was wrong. He tried to contact his close friend and confidant, Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, but Coons was speaking at a conference in Colorado and was unable to answer the call.
Knowing the news wouldn’t last much longer, at 1:45 p.m., President Biden took a call with his campaign advisors and advisors to let them know he was out. A minute after the meeting began, a letter addressed to his “fellow Americans” was published on his X account, in which Biden called serving as President “the greatest honor” of his life. He decided, he wrote, “that it was in the best interest of my party and the country for me to step aside and concentrate solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”
The news sent shockwaves across the country and the world and derailed the race for president. But there was still a lingering question: Would Biden consider whether Harris should take over the ticket?
Twenty-seven minutes later, Biden published a second post, this one addressed to his “fellow Democrats”. He wrote that choosing Harris as his 2020 vice president was “the best decision” he has ever made and offered his “full support and endorsement for Kamala to be our party’s nominee.” He urged Democrats to “come together and defeat Trump.”
And with these two social media posts, the Biden-Harris campaign has come to an end. The President spent the rest of the afternoon working to pass the baton to his chosen successor, connecting with his core base of union leaders, governors and Democratic stakeholders in power. That work seemed to pay off quickly, as a groundswell of support for what was now Harris’ campaign erupted that afternoon and continued into the evening.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
