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Joe Biden’s reelection campaign met a lonely end on Sunday when, sick with Covid and surrounded by only his closest family members and advisers at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, he posted a brief statement on social media telling the world he had decided to stand down from the 2024 Democratic party ticket.
In the three weeks since his disastrous turn on the debate stage in Atlanta, the 81-year-old president fought hard to convince his party and the American public that he was not only fully fit and ready to take on Donald Trump once again but to serve another four years in the White House.
But no matter how much he tried to persuade anxious lawmakers on Capitol Hill or how defiant a tone he struck in interviews, the gaffes kept on coming, including an especially embarrassing moment at the Nato summit where he called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “President Putin”.
As more and more Democrats came forward publicly and privately to call on him to “pass the torch”, Biden appeared to grow more and more isolated, with only his most trusted advisers taken into his confidence.
The assassination attempt on Trump followed by the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee provided a brief distraction but, in the midst of all of that noise, Biden was struck down with Covid during a campaign trip to Las Vegas, forcing him further into isolation.
It was there, recovering at his Delaware beach retreat with only his wife, First Lady Dr Jill Biden, for company, that Biden finally accepted his number was up.
His decision to quit “happened in the last 48 hours”, an unnamed senior aide told CNN late on Sunday, as the president took calls sounding out his closest aides and his family members throughout the weekend.
Exit plans were discussed for the first time seriously on Saturday night and continued on Sunday morning.
In the end it was polling data, not concerns about his mental acuity or any other health condition, that convinced him to make way, another aide told the network.
Biden had insisted at his “big boy” Nato press conference that only convincing polls could change his mind about staying in the race, an issue former House speaker Nancy Pelosi is reported to have subsequently pushed him on, warning that he had no path to victory and risked taking the House and Senate down with him if he stumbled onwards to Election Day.
White House counselor Steve Ricchetti, senior campaign adviser Mike Donilon, deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini and senior adviser to the first lady Anthony Bernal all joined the Bidens at their vacation home at the weekend and it ultimately fell to them to finally make it clear to the president that there was no way to come back from the abyss.
“The poll numbers they got recently were very sobering for them,” an adviser told The Washington Post, adding that the pressure from Biden’s fellow Democratic lawmakers, not to mention party donors, strategists, activists, celebrities and sympathetic media pundits was simply becoming too great to ignore.
“They wanted to stop the bleeding, to give him time to think about what he wants to say… It was so relentless. Every day it was a new person.”
It had all taken a personal toll on the lifelong Democrat, a public servant for more than half a century. So much so that the Joe Biden who finally came to accept his fate was one who felt “deeply betrayed and upset” by people he had considered his friends, said insiders
Biden held a family meeting on Saturday night and his daughter Ashley and son-in-law Howard drove to Rehoboth early on Sunday to be with him.
After that, Biden put in calls to key players within his administration, including Vice President Kamala Harris, and to other members of his family not present.
Biden also put in separate calls to his chief of staff Jeff Zients and to his campaign co-chair Jen O’Malley Dillon to inform them of his decision.
Only two days earlier, the latter had appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to declare that her boss would “absolutely” be staying in the race.
With just 107 days to go before the presidential election, other aides, including communications adviser Anita Dunn, had to find out the momentous news that Biden would not be the party’s 2024 candidate after all the same way the American public did: in a post on X.
Back in Washington DC, Ziets led calls with the president’s Cabinet and with senior White House staff that afternoon, just before the public announcement was posted, with Biden himself joining to tell them personally that he would be abandoning his reelection dreams.
According to the Post, Zients then wrote an email to the entire White House team shortly after at 2.26pm.
It read: “There is so much more to do – and as President Biden says, ‘There is nothing America can’t do – when we do it together.’”
