Chapter 31
There was little precedent for what was about to happen, and we were just a handful of people in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Once it was written, how would the message be sent?
On Sunday, Anthony called Jen O’Malley Dillon, Joe’s campaign chair, with a hypothetical question: “What if he had to get a statement out to the world on this topic? How would we do it?”
“Well, we’d have to let Rob know,” she said. Rob Flaherty was the deputy campaign manager who oversaw all digital communication for the campaign.
I overheard a conversation about the best time of day to share the news.
“How much daylight do we need?” one asked.
“We should do this at noon,” another said.
“West Coast time or East Coast time?”
Apparently, some supporters were going to be on the Sunday morning shows saying Joe should stay in, and we didn’t want them to be blindsided by questions from news anchors who’d heard the news at daybreak.
Meanwhile, Joe still had to do the job of governing.
He had an important foreign policy call—we later learned it was with a Slavic diplomat, negotiating for the release of hostages being held in Russia.
The rain had cleared, and it promised to be another beautiful day at the beach. I steeled myself for the hours ahead.
When Joe was off the phone, we reconvened.
Without a discussion, Joe said, “Okay, I’m ready to do this. Let’s get this thing done.” He had made his decision.
The plan was to start making notification calls and to release the letter sometime after noon.
I wanted the family to be told before anyone else. Hunter said he’d take care of notifying his girls. Joe wanted to call his sister and brother. I called Ashley. When I told her the news, she was heartbroken. “Why? Is Dad okay? Did something happen? He can win! Why is he getting out?”
I told her that Joe had to make his own decisions, and he wanted to do what was best for the party.
Joe’s siblings called to tell him about all the people supporting him.
He told them he was dropping out and read them the letter.
Then he called Jen O’Malley Dillon, told her about his decision, and read it to her, too.
It was a heartfelt conversation—she had been fighting so hard for Joe, for so long—then, she put the wheels in motion to tell the world.
When Joe reached Kamala, she was at home at the vice president’s residence. Her campaign staff was in the pool house. With the call on speaker and the rest of us seated with him around the table, Joe told her that he’d made the decision to drop out of the race.
“Oh my God, Joe,” she said. “Are you sure?”
Joe read the letter to her. He said he’d pass resources to her and support her as nominee. Her candidacy would be historic.
“Let me say, I love you to death,” Kamala said. “Are you sure you feel right?”
“The leaders have made the decision for the party,” he said. “It’s about my age.”
She switched immediately into what I could only imagine to be her courtroom prosecutor mode.
“So how are you thinking about timing?” she asked.
“The letter goes out today,” he said. “I have to do it soon.”
“Today? Okay, so the concern I have is what’s the process of saying whether you support me? Any gap in time will have people speculating. We need to control this more.”
Mike weighed in: “We need time. Early tomorrow morning, the president can send a letter to the Dems saying that you have his support.”
They kept describing the way they were planning to go out with the news, and she kept pushing back hard, urging him to do it faster: “How soon can you endorse me, Joe?”
“By tomorrow, probably,” he replied.
“No—you know these Democrats, and they will be up to mischief. I want it sooner.”
“I’ll call you back when I figure this out,” Joe said.
“Could you do it soon? Say, in twenty minutes?”
I walked out of the room.
There were more calls that day, so many calls. I went in and out of the room, listening for a while and then taking time to myself before returning to see what was happening next.
Jim Clyburn, a loyal friend through the years, encouraged Joe to get out there and say he supported Kamala before the questions about his successor started.
He wanted Joe to be proactive. “Take control of the process,” Jim advised.
Jim always gave Joe sage advice. Joe was close to him and his late wife, Emily, who held a special place in our hearts.
It’s hard to have true friends in Washington, but Jim was one of them. Still is.
“I have a letter that’s going out,” Joe said. “Then I’ll make a statement that I support Kamala.”
Listening on speakerphone, Mike clarified, “A separate tweet, ‘I support Kamala Harris,’ will go out after the letter.”
In his bones, Joe believed that he could win and knew he could serve.
To give that up and walk away from the public service role that was his life’s purpose was a choice he made entirely in the interest of serving his party and assuaging his country.
Pulling out of the race was yet another moment in Joe’s life when everything changed in an instant.
As he had so many times before, he rose to the challenge and handled it with grace.
Watching him on the phone that day, somber and resolute, I thought, I wish people could see this statesman.
The letter went out at 1:46 p.m.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President,” Joe said in the letter.
“And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”
The house was filling up. Steve, Mike, Richard, Jacob, Anthony, and Annie were all there as Joe called his senior staff. Ashley drove down, too.
He told his senior staff that it had become hard to get the campaign on track after the debate. He said that he’d made the decision not to run. He read them the letter. He said once the letter went out that soon after he would send out a tweet to endorse Kamala.
On the call, Joe’s chief of staff, Jeff Zients, told him, “You’ve been an extraordinary president. We have more to do.”
“A lot of work left to do,” Joe said. “I’ll need your help.”
Whenever anyone pushed back on his choice, he said, simply, “I shouldn’t have to take on Democrats to be the nominee.”
That was it. It was done.
Fifteen minutes later, Kamala called. She had been joined by her aides Sheila Nix and Lorraine Voles and their staff.
Joe said again that there would be coordination between his team and hers.
“Okay, that’s great,” she said. “I want to be in the strongest position. I believe in you. I want to be a part of your legacy.”
Steve jumped in and mentioned that the tweets supporting her would be going out. “It will move quickly,” he said.
“We are students of history,” said Kamala. “We control how this narrative unfolds. It’s significant how this transfer takes place.”
Steve: “Yes, this preserves that.”
She was not wrong to worry about the party’s plans. Many Democrats wanted to explore various options for Joe’s replacement. But Joe was always going to support his vice president. He did not even consider giving his delegates to anyone else.
As promised, Joe followed up his announcement about leaving the race with an endorsement of Kamala. At 2:13 p.m., about half an hour after leaving the race, he posted on X:
My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term.
My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President.
And it’s been the best decision I’ve made.
Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year.
Democrats—it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.
I didn’t want my staff to hear it from anyone but me, so I called them. After sharing the news, I told them that we had to do whatever we could to help Kamala win.
That night, as we got ready for bed, I asked Joe, “How are you feeling about the decision?”
He appeared strong and resigned. He took my hand and said, “Jilly, I had no choice.”