Inside the Final Hours of the Biden Campaign

President Biden’s beach house in Rehoboth, Del., sits on a marshy inlet a few blocks from the Atlantic Ocean. The home serves as a retreat for Biden, a place to recharge and reflect and be surrounded by his family. And it was there on Saturday evening that Biden finally decided he had gone as far as he could in his race for a second term.

The 81-year-old had 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 brought him up to speed on some economic news, and his homeland security advisor, Liz Sherwood-Randall, had updated him on the investigation into how the Secret Service allowed a gunman to get into firing range of his political opponent former President Donald Trump the weekend before.

But by the end of the day he knew the time had come to face the pressing question of his political future. The Republicans had just closed out their convention in Milwaukee on Thursday firmly united behind 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, in contrast, could not have looked more discordant, with more calls for Biden to drop out coming over the weekend as polls showed him slipping further behind Trump.

The President gathered together in his beach house his deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini, his Congress whisperer Steve Ricchetti, and the keeper of his political voice, Mike Donilon, as well as First Lady Jill Biden and her senior advisor Anthony Bernal, according to multiple people familiar with the President’s deliberations.

He told that small group he had come to the historic decision to step out of the race less than four months before Election Day, propelling his party into uncharted waters. They spent the night crafting his statement and plotting a way forward. But that earth-shattering news was held in confidence until the next day.

Midday Sunday, Biden called Vice President Kamala Harris to tell her he intended to leave the top of the ticket and endorse her. He soon read in Zients, his Chief of Staff, and then broke the news to Jen O'Malley Dillon, his campaign chair, who had spent the past several 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 reach his close friend and confidant, Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, but Coons was speaking at a conference in Colorado and wasn’t able to take the call.

Knowing the news wouldn’t hold much longer, at 1:45 pm, President Biden got onto a call with his senior advisors and senior campaign aides to tell them he was out. One minute into that meeting, a letter addressed to his “fellow Americans” was posted to his X account in which Biden called serving as President “the greatest honor” of his life. He had decided, he wrote, “it was in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”

The news sent shockwaves through the country and the world, and upended the race for President. But there was still a lingering question: Would Biden weigh in on whether Harris should take over the ticket? 

Twenty-seven minutes later, Biden put up a second post, this one addressed to his “fellow Democrats.” He wrote that picking Harris as his vice president in 2020 was “the best decision” he’s ever made, and he offered his “full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party.” He urged Democrats to “come together and beat Trump.”  

And with those two social media posts, the Biden-Harris campaign came to an end. The President spent the rest of the afternoon working to pass the baton to his chosen successor by connecting with his core base of union leaders, governors and Democratic power players. That work appeared to quickly pay off, as a wave of endorsements for what was now the Harris campaign broke through that afternoon and continued into the evening.