Chapter 4
During those months, I spent a lot of time traveling to Iowa—sitting in people’s homes, talking to them about supporting Joe.
I’d be there for hours, telling them about Joe, his positions, and then they’d say, “We need to meet him again—like three more times—to make up our mind.” Their indecision was dispiriting.
Because Iowa uses a caucus system, voters would have to publicly back you.
If you didn’t have enough support to be considered viable, your supporters would need to choose another candidate.
Some people would say that they’d support you, but then, in the end, they didn’t.
When Joe withdrew that September, I heard that a job was opening up at Claymont High School in January, and I took it.
A few weeks into that semester, just two days before Valentine’s Day, someone from the school’s main office knocked on my door to tell me something was very wrong with Joe.
I rushed to his side and learned he’d had an aneurysm.
I walked into the hospital room just as he was being given last rites.
I yelled at the priest to get out—my husband was not going to die.
He had to be taken by ambulance from Saint Francis Hospital in Wilmington to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC—he couldn’t be flown because of his medical condition.
Instead of the romantic Valentine’s weekend we’d planned at an inn in Connecticut, we were on a long, snowy drive between hospitals, his life hanging in the balance.
“Way to ruin the holiday,” I teased him.
Primary season began with the Iowa caucuses, followed by a primary in New Hampshire.
Iowa has ninety-nine counties, so a candidate has to be extremely organized to do well there.
New Hampshire is a test of momentum because it’s a ballot race.
You have to be able to energize people and get them to come out in the cold.
We spent an enormous amount of time campaigning in those two states.
A volunteer named Jodi Grover, an educator from a local college, drove us to nearly all our Iowa campaign events.
She logged the distance she and I traveled together to Iowa tour stops from February 2019 to June 2020: 7,447 miles.
As we neared each destination, our hype song was “Dance Monkey” by Tones and I.
Jodi is a lifelong friend and the best of Iowa.
Her mother would often surprise me with her homemade strawberry-rhubarb pie, my favorite.
I arrived at many events in those first two states to find only a handful of people—one time, just two.
Still, Joe was led to believe his campaign was still viable.
It certainly wasn’t my job to second-guess the advisors, so I trusted the process.
If Joe wanted to stay in the race, and his team thought he had a shot in spite of what I was seeing on the ground, I would keep showing up.
Candidates tend at one point or another to wind up in a bubble because they’re working so hard to raise money and reach voters.
I was always trying to get myself out of it, whether by staying in touch with my sisters and friends outside DC or through my job, and I encouraged Joe as much as I could to widen his circle of advisors.
Too often, I’d seen how candidates had been led to believe that their chances were better than they were.
I didn’t want that to happen to Joe. In March 2019, as the campaign was taking shape, long before the primaries, I’d attended a planning meeting at our home on Chain Bridge Road.
Looking around at the advisors, I imagined Joe out on the trail months into the future.
I wanted to know how he’d avoid being surprised or disappointed.
“Which one of you is going to tell him the truth?” I said, looking around the table.
One advisor said, “I will! I’m going to be the truth-teller!”
Did he? I found myself wondering about that when Joe floundered in the primaries.
Joe came in fourth place in Iowa, and fifth in New Hampshire.
Especially for a former vice president, the poor showing was remarkable, and Joe was surprised he hadn’t done better.
I was devastated for him. I couldn’t help but suspect that Joe’s advisors had been overstating his chance of winning the nomination.
Joe did better in the third primary contest, in Nevada, by which time many of the candidates were running out of money.
Joe’s campaign chairman, Steve Ricchetti, did some fundraising so Joe had enough to stay in.
I would support Joe as long as he stayed in the race, but after New Hampshire, I privately suspected that the campaign was all but over.
When the power went out at our hotel on our final night in New Hampshire, it felt like an omen.
Then, on the day of the primary, we flew to Columbia, South Carolina.
The enthusiasm for Joe’s campaign changed as quickly as the weather.
That night, the Bethlehem Baptist Church Mass Choir sang “All in His Hands.” Congressman Jim Clyburn would later draw a parallel to how safe our country would be in Joe’s care: “I can think of no one better suited, better prepared. I can think of no one with more integrity, no one more committed to the fundamental principles that make this country what it is than my good friend.”
That was the turning point. It was actually surreal how abruptly Joe’s fortunes shifted.
On March 2, the calls started coming in: Beto O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg—all were endorsing Joe.
That day, I surprised Joe backstage at a rally in Dallas.
I could feel the energy in the room; it was the opposite of the sleepy events in chilly New Hampshire.
On Super Tuesday, March 3, Joe won ten out of fourteen contests.
Endorsements from Michael Bloomberg and Kamala Harris followed on March 4 and 8.
That was a lesson to me in trusting Joe’s instincts, and his advisors.
Even when a campaign seemed to be over, apparently sometimes you just had to give it a few days and everything could change.
On April 8, Bernie Sanders left the race, endorsing Joe, at which point Joe became the presumptive nominee.
In a video posted online, Barack Obama began, “Let me start by saying the obvious: These aren’t normal times.
” He talked about how dire things were, and described the qualities a leader needed to help America make it through the pandemic and to rebuild: “knowledge and experience, honesty and humility, empathy and grace.”
“Choosing Joe to be my vice president was one of the best decisions I ever made, and he became a close friend,” Barack continued. “And I believe Joe has all the qualities we need in a president right now.”
A tough primary was over.