WASHINGTON – As the formulaic “pass the torch” drumbeat thumped on from lawmakers wanting him to quit the race, President Joe Biden maintained a brave face. Publicly, he vowed he was all in, until the day he got out.
But there were telling indications he was listening to that beat long before he ended his campaign for reelection. One sign was over a week ago, when Chuck Schumer visited his Delaware beach house as an emissary of gloom.
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The Senate majority leader had spoken with Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and the House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, a few days earlier. He had heard from nearly every Democratic senator, pinging him over the last three weeks on his old-school flip phone.
He wasn't speaking for all of them, but for many.
Think about what's bound to happen to Democrats in Congress, Schumer implored the president. Think about the generations-long impact of a Supreme Court with Donald Trump in the White House. Think about your legacy.
“I need a week,” Biden said. The two men hugged.
That scene and those words were described by someone familiar with the conversation, who would only detail it on condition of anonymity. Other firsthand observers of Biden's struggle to stay viable also described a privately contemplative president during his days of decision.
Some spoke on the record; others anonymously. Together, their accounts show a president who was determined to exhaust every avenue to keep his hopes alive, but ultimately not in denial about the prospects.
By the weekend, if not sooner, the gravity of it all reached a critical mass — the terrible polls, the precipitous drop in big-money donations, the sad voices of those he most respected and had worked with for decades.
One insider said Biden “began to come to a decision on Saturday evening,” in the company of four close advisers. Things moved quickly Sunday. Biden gave South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn early word he would be stepping aside, in what the congressman called a “very pleasant conversation.” He did not speak with Pelosi at the time.
In a hooded Howard University sweatshirt, workout sweats and sneakers, Vice President Kamala Harris held several conversations with Biden and as the day wore on, spent over 10 hours on the phone with more than 100 politicians and some activists. She knew she would get the huge boost of Biden's endorsement, yet needed to be seen as earning the nomination in her own right.
At 1:45 p.m., after separate calls to Harris, chief of staff Jeff Zients and campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon, he was connected on the phone with a small group of other advisers.
One minute later, with the release of his letter on X, the world knew.
Democrats saw trouble from the first moment of the debate
Democrats blanched in the first seconds of the June 27 debate with Trump. Low energy, hoarse, sometimes inaudible, Biden did not meet the moment as more than 50 million people watched.
He spoke of “making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the COVID. Excuse me ... we finally beat Medicare.” It emerged later that he meant to claim that he had beaten the pharmaceutical industry, but many such points were lost in the fog.
Some outliers were already left thinking the unthinkable — Biden had to go. But it was still possible for many to believe Biden merely had a “bad night,” but only if he still could have the benefit of the doubt.
More fumbles over the following days all fed into the public's suspicion, simmering over several years, that Biden was not fit for another term. The loyalist insiders kept insisting Biden was on his game. The vast nation of non-political outsiders saw through the pretense.
But as questions about Biden’s acuity rolled into the first weekend after the debate, most lawmakers' phones — including those of the top rungs of congressional leadership — remained silent from the one person who could quell the unease: the president himself.
Even midway through the next week, Biden had not spoken with leading lawmakers, spreading frustration and panic through party ranks as many tried to relax at home and prepare for Independence Day celebrations.
Two days before the Fourth of July, Texas Democrat Rep. Lloyd Doggett, 77, became the first Democrat to call for Biden to withdraw from the race. A long-serving, but low-key member, Doggett did not prompt a mass move from the Democratic caucus, but it was also a telltale sign of the rippling crisis.
Pelosi, the former speaker, and Clyburn began openly airing their concerns about Biden’s condition, creating a permission structure for others to do the same. Early on, Pelosi said it was legitimate for Democrats to ask whether Biden's night was a mere episode or a sign of a condition.
Soon, the list of lawmakers saying Biden should withdraw — or at least saying he had no chance of coming back against Trump — was growing.
They were playing a risky game with their careers — the party brass on one side, constituents on the other. No one wanted to cross the hunkered-down Biden campaign, but fears were rampant that the president's continued candidacy would take down Democrats across the landscape in November.
Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet vocalized those fears when other senators still wouldn't. "Donald Trump is on track, I think, to win this election and maybe win it by a landslide and take with him the Senate and the House,” said Bennet.
The Biden-must-go contingent, though hugely outnumbered by fence-sitters and Biden loyalists, was not to be swayed easily. On several occasions, when the president made a good speech or showed sharpness off script, the list only grew.
Four jumped on the list the day after Trump's speech to the convention and more followed. If some Democrats thought Trump's ultimately divisive and rambling convention remarks could swing the pendulum back to Biden, other Democrats did not agree.
In similar fashion earlier, Biden displayed a mastery of policy, despite some gaffes, in an hourlong news conference following a NATO summit in Washington, prompting some loyalists to say, in effect — See? He's fine. Immediately afterward, Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, posted on X that Biden should end his campaign. Several others did as well.
There was a sameness to these appeals from lawmakers as the list grew to over three dozen: Praise Biden's legacy, invoke the torch.
But some stood out. Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, in The Boston Globe, recalled breakfasts with Biden when he was vice president, a rally Biden staged for him after his tough primary win in 2014 and the many times, as recently as this past Christmas Ball, when he caught the president's eye and Biden “would break into that big, wide Joe Biden grin and say how glad he was to see me.”
They saw each other again, in France in early June at a D-Day commemoration. “For the first time, he didn’t seem to recognize me,” Moulton wrote. “Of course, that can happen as anyone ages, but as I watched the disastrous debate a few weeks ago, I have to admit that what I saw in Normandy was part of a deeper problem.”
Working private channels to ease an exit
With growing anxiety among his members in the two weeks after the debate, Schumer was talking to top White House aides Steve Ricchetti and Zients almost daily. Internally, Schumer urged senators not to speak out publicly and embarrass the president, believing instead that appealing to Biden’s legacy and looking at poll numbers were the best approach.
Schumer eventually told Zients and Ricchetti that he wanted top Biden advisers to hear from caucus members themselves and invited them to a meeting July 11 before they all left town.
Aides Mike Donilon, Ricchetti and O’Malley Dillon came to the meeting with senators, held off campus, and it did not go well. Almost none expressed confidence in the president. But even afterwards, Schumer was worried that the heavy concerns were not getting through to Biden.
Following the meeting, Schumer called Jeffries, Pelosi and Obama. He decided that day that he needed to see Biden.
They met that Saturday in Rehoboth, hours before the assassination attempt on Trump. Schumer told Biden he came out of love and affection, then gave him his bleak prognosis. Biden took the week he said he needed.
Biden's fighting mode finally waned
On the fateful Sunday, the Biden campaign was still pitching the line that their guy was full-on in. Aides pointed to a letter by Democratic Party chairs in seven swing states that urged Democrats to unite around Biden.
“We understand the anxiety," said the chairs from Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. “But the best antidote to political anxiety is taking action. You can’t wring your hands when you’re rolling up your sleeves.”
On the Sunday news shows, Sen. Joe Manchin the independent West Virginia senator who caucuses with Democrats, weighed in.
On CNN: "I came to the decision with a heavy heart that I think it’s time to pass the torch to a new generation.”
On ABC: “I come with a heavy heart to think the time has come for him to pass the torch to a new generation.”
On CBS, Biden campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond said flatly of the president: “He's going to be the candidate.”
“He's in a fighting mode," Richmond added, "and I’m with him, and I’m gonna be with him until the wheels fall off.”
Which the wheels did.