Chapter 29
Every morning in the following weeks, before I was fully awake, I had the feeling that something awful had happened.
As I opened my eyes and sat up, I remembered what it was—the debate.
Joe’s performance had scared people into believing that he was suffering from a profound cognitive decline and that he wasn’t mentally fit to be president.
To me, and to those who spent the most time with him, the man on that stage was not who we saw on a daily basis. Yes, he was older. He seemed tired more often. But Joe’s closest advisors said the campaign remained viable, and they insisted that Joe owed it to the country to stay in the race.
Over the years, there had been uncomfortable moments, to be sure.
I flinched when Joe said, at the White House press conference after the Hur Report was released, “The president of Mexico, Sisi, did not want to open up the gate to allow humanitarian material to get in.” He meant “the president of Egypt.” The truth was that he was not performing as well as he had in his younger days.
Did that disqualify him from being president, as long as he was still getting the job done?
I didn’t think so, nor did the staff members who were spending far more time with him than I was.
The optimistic thinking was that enough voters would say, “Okay, he’s old, but he’s been doing a good job. There’s a young vice president. If during his second term he gets to the point where he needs to hand over power, the worst-case scenario would still be good.”
If you knew Joe Biden well, you’d know that if he actually got to the point where he wasn’t capable of doing the job, he would step down.
Certainly, if he exhibited cognitive impairment, I would not hesitate to say so.
His staff would not hesitate to say so. But he was nowhere near that point in the summer of 2024.
While I’d never cared for politics, I’d been around it long enough to become pragmatic about elections.
Campaigning in New Hampshire during the 2020 primary, I’d gotten in trouble for bluntly saying, “Your candidate might be better on, I don’t know, health care than Joe is, but you’ve got to look at who’s going to win this election, and maybe you have to swallow a little bit and say, ‘Okay, I personally like so-and-so better, but your bottom line has to be that we have to beat Trump.’ ”
“Swallow?” an aide of mine teased after that event. “What’s next, Jill—‘suck it up’?”
Note taken. But in July 2024, even after the debate, based on what I was seeing, I believed Joe was the best bet for preventing the return of an administration that seemed likely to bring chaos.
I felt that even if people thought a younger candidate would be more exciting to people, it made sense for the party to stay with Joe.
He was the incumbent, a huge advantage. Plus, he’d done so much good.
He had integrity. People who spent as much time around him as I did were not nearly as worried as Democratic elites seemed to be.
But alarming information kept trickling in.
I was told that people had begun telling fundraisers to stop giving to Joe’s campaign.
Someone I barely knew texted me to say it looked like “time to take the car keys away from Grandpa.” I found that so presumptuous and so condescending—and it was one of what felt like hourly calls for him to step aside.
It began to feel like death by a thousand paper cuts.
Was there anyone else who could beat Trump? A year earlier, the best Democratic minds hadn’t thought so when they implored him to run. Now what?
As long as there was still a campaign in front of us, I stayed on the trail to reach as many people as possible each day. Time is the only commodity that isn’t replenishable on a campaign. On the road, warm crowds were coming out for Joe. I saw the enthusiasm.
There was chatter around the concept of Joe taking a cognitive test. My belief was that it would not be a challenge for him.
Why not give people that test score so they felt assured of his competency?
I said as much to Joe, but I was at odds with his advisors.
They argued to him that every day on the job was a cognitive test, and that it was absurd for people to think that an ability to count backward by threes or whatever the test required would satisfy anyone if his track record didn’t.
Our first real sign that major forces were rallying to ease Joe out of the race was a call from Barack raising the issue.
If I stepped outside my role as the protective spouse, I understood Barack’s point of view.
Barack had been the change candidate. He’d been leading the Democrats into a new era, a new party.
Joe had been in the government for decades; he was never going to be a change candidate.
Still, overhearing Joe on that phone call, I felt flat.
If I’d been asked what would be best for the family, I knew the answer was clear: Get out.
The price of entry into politics is being judged incessantly.
No one gives you leeway or grace. You’re looked at with a skeptical eye—the way you speak, any misstep.
But I wanted whatever was best for the country.
Ultimately, this was Joe’s decision and his alone.
Which polls, which advisors, which news stories could Joe trust?
When it came to his health, the doctors would know best, wouldn’t they?
His doctor said he had passed his annual checkup with flying colors in February.
Every year, he met with a cardiologist, a neurologist, a dermatologist—just like all his predecessors.
His doctors told Joe that there was no need for testing beyond this extensive battery, and no reason to do a cognitive test.
It was decided that the fear had to be quelled by Joe and Joe alone.
He began to get out there and fight harder for himself.
In an ABC News interview on July 5, George Stephanopoulos drilled him on whether he was mentally fit.
Joe made the case that the debate was a bad night.
He said, “I don’t think anybody’s more qualified to be president or win this race than me.
” That interview didn’t seem to provide the reassurance people wanted.
On July 10, George Clooney published an essay in The New York Times: “I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee.” He said that the Joe he saw at the fundraiser was the one everyone saw at the debate.
“I consider him a friend,” Clooney said, “and I believe in him. Believe in his character. Believe in his morals. In the last four years, he’s won many of the battles he’s faced.
But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. ”
Earlier that week, Nancy Pelosi had reached out directly to Joe asking to meet.
I’d first met Nancy in the late 1970s in Rehoboth Beach with her husband, Paul, at the Sussex County Jamboree.
After Joe became VP, the relationship deepened.
Being around her was natural and easy. When Joe became president, we saw Nancy and Paul even more often—whether at fundraisers or state events—and I became truly fond of them. Joe thought the world of her.
Whenever there was a funeral at the Capitol, she’d be in charge and would greet us, and there she’d be up on those heels, gliding across those hard floors, looking impeccable into her eighties. I admired her elegance and her leadership.
The morning of July 10, Nancy was brought in quietly and ushered into the Yellow Oval at the residence.
Joe later told me that she said the question of whether to stay in the race was his decision—but he should drop out.
She said Joe would be heartbroken if he heard what the Democrats were saying about him.
That struck a nerve in Joe. He so valued the Congress and had longtime support from members on both sides of the aisle.
Earlier that same morning, Nancy Pelosi had gone on Morning Joe and said, “It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run.
We’re all encouraging him to make that decision.
Because time is running short… He is beloved.
He is respected. And people want him to make that decision. ”
She was asked if she wanted him to run and she said, “I want him to do whatever he decides to do, and that’s the way it is. Whatever he decides, we go with.”
The next day, Joe did a live press conference at the NATO summit.
On CNN, Van Jones introduced the clip beautifully:
He’s got to walk out there, frankly, on a carpet of prayers.
There’s a lot of grassroots people who see this very differently than the political professionals like myself.
There are a lot of African Americans in particular who feel that Donald Trump is getting a free pass.
He can say anything, and it’s expected that he’s going to say crazy stuff, that Joe Biden is being held to a different standard, and it’s not fair.
And so, there’s a lot of prayer out there for Biden that you don’t see.
There’s a lot of people who feel, you know, in the Black community we’re so used to seeing leaders stumble and then be attacked.
You know, grassroots fundraising is going up for him, phone calls into Black radio stations are going up for him.
I was seeing that support, too—on the trail and in messages coming in from all over.
I didn’t want to discount the will of the thousands of voters I was interacting with.
I didn’t want to ignore my own experience of Joe as physically weaker but still mentally fit.
I wanted Joe to maintain his dignity and to continue to do the right thing, as he always had.
What was the right thing? I hoped it would become clear soon.