Page 4 of 107 Days

On the coffee table at the vice president’s residence, the thousand pieces of the harvest festival jigsaw puzzle lay scattered. My grandnieces pounded up the stairs to find their parents, Nik and Meena. Meena was in the closet, packing for the trip home to Palo Alto.

My sister, Maya, had been only seventeen, still in high school, when Meena was born.

I was in the midst of my undergrad degree at Howard and had been admitted to law school at Georgetown.

Instead, I came home and did my law degree at Hastings so I could help with the baby as Maya went to Berkeley and then got her law degree at Stanford.

Meena did her undergrad at Stanford and law at Harvard.

She is now a writer, producer, all-round firecracker. And she is a daughter to me.

She was folding clothes when her two girls burst into the room.

“Mommy, Mommy!” Amara exclaimed. “Auntie says everyone has to come downstairs!”

Meena went on packing. “In a minute, honey. We need to get going to the airport soon—”

“ No! ” Amara waved her hands. “Auntie said”—she scrunched her small face into the best imitation she could muster of the urgent look I’d just given her—“come downstairs right now !”

Meena dumped the clothes and ran down the stairs to the second floor, just as my brother-in-law, Tony West, came sprinting up from the first.

I first heard about Tony when Meena was four years old and kept talking about “my friend Tony.” I finally asked Maya about this little friend of Meena’s.

Maya confided that Tony wasn’t a preschool pal; he was her law school classmate and the president of the Stanford Law Review .

Maya and Tony married soon after graduation.

Tony is a brilliant lawyer and has been a brother to me for thirty-six years.

Even though he had been number three at the Department of Justice, and is now chief legal officer at Uber, Doug and I have taken to affectionately calling him our fifty-year-old teenaged son, given how much we love taking care of him when he stays with us.

He is also an astute political thinker, working on campaigns since he was a teenager, first for Representative Norm Mineta, then for Michael Dukakis, John Kerry, and Barack Obama.

A year earlier, he had started what he called the “Red File.” With a president in his eighties, he suggested, it would be malpractice on my part to be unprepared if, God forbid, something should happen.

In such a traumatic moment, it would be prudent to have a plan for the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours, so people don’t have to make a lot of decisions in the pressure of a crisis.

He had thought through the first twenty-five calls I would need to make to world leaders, the first twenty-five to political colleagues, when to make my first statement, and what the rules of transition are.

I didn’t want to dwell on such an eventuality: I left it in his hands.

As the pressure for Joe to drop out had mounted, he’d pulled out the Red File and started adding to it. I did not want to be a part of any such discussions, so while Tony was in town for the family weekend, he’d gathered four members of my core team, without me, for a meeting in the pool house.

Tony had opened the meeting saying, “Let’s assume he’s dropping out tomorrow.”

“That’s not going to happen,” replied Brian Fallon, my chief of communications. “He’s got Netanyahu this week.”

When I sent Nik out to get Tony, the group was on a Zoom call with the DNC convention chair, Minyon Moore, in Chicago.

She was midsentence, explaining the delegate process, when she suddenly looked down at her phone, distracted.

“Guys, hold on for a second,” she said. Quentin Fulks, Joe’s deputy campaign manager, had called.

Biden had just told him he was dropping out.

At that same moment, Nik appeared at the pool house door.

“Tony, she needs you in the house.”

I was still on the phone with Joe as Tony burst into my office. When I put the phone down, Tony and I stared at each other, shocked at what had suddenly happened, concerned for what was at stake.

“If this isn’t handled right, he will crap all over his legacy,” Tony said.

We waited for the promised call back from Joe, anxious as the minutes passed. News was starting to leak. Then, the call.

There was no postponing the announcement of his dropping out, Joe said. “But the statement endorsing you will go out a few minutes later.”

“Joe, thank you for this,” I said, relieved. “I will do you proud. I am so looking forward to carrying on the work we’ve done together.”

“You’re gonna do great, kid.”

His announcement that he would not be seeking reelection hit social media just twenty-two minutes after we hung up. Twenty-seven minutes after that, he endorsed me as the Democratic candidate for president of the United States.

From all over the city that hot Sunday afternoon, my staff dropped whatever they were doing and rushed to my side.

Some hurried over in their workout clothes.

But Steven Kelly, one of my speechwriters, always immaculately dressed out of respect for his White House role, had taken time to put on a suit and tie.

“Steven, today you can ditch the tie,” I told him.

The group from the pool house, who had expected to be here for a short what-if meeting, canceled their plans for the rest of the day.

The table that had just been the site of a relaxed family meal was suddenly covered in binders and notepads.

It became a boiler room, a site for the rolling calls we needed to make right away to secure support from Democratic delegates gathering for our convention in Chicago in less than a month, as well as from the former presidents, elected officials, and labor leaders who would be attending.

I knew I had everything I needed to do this. With Joe’s endorsement and more name recognition than anyone else who might challenge, I had the strongest case. I’d also proven in the midterms that I could help flip seats. I had appeal for moderates and independents.

I also had a powerful personal contact list. On the road for the past four years, touring college campuses to build youth support and, more recently, on my tour for reproductive rights, I’d made a point of inviting local elected leaders to my events.

Later, I’d have a moment with them, take a picture, have a brief chat.

I would meet fifty to a hundred people a day in this way, and I had made it a point to follow up and keep those connections alive.

During the delegate selection process, I’d pressed to include people who were my enthusiastic supporters, not just Joe’s—people I’d known for years.

I don’t think too many people grasped the strength of the relationships I’d forged.

This was not going to be a coronation. It would be the result of years of work.

But the one person I hadn’t talked to was Doug. He wasn’t answering his phone. I asked Meena and Tony to try calling our son, Cole, also in Los Angeles, to see if he had any idea where his dad was.

On a bike at SoulCycle in West Hollywood, as it turned out. He was catching up with a partner at his former law firm who’d come out as gay during the Covid pandemic. After their workout, Doug was grabbing coffee with Mitch and his boyfriend, Bob, when Bob glanced down at his phone.

“Doug,” he said, “I think you need to see this.” It was Biden’s announcement about withdrawing from the race.

“Guys, I gotta go.”

Doug lurched from the table and sprinted the hundred yards to his car, where he’d left his phone. There was steam coming out of it. As well as missed calls from me, every member of his family had texted: Call Kamala.

“Where the hell have you been?” I demanded. “I need you!”

“I don’t see an endorsement. What’s going on?”

“Don’t worry, it’s coming,” I said. We strategized for a few seconds on how to get him back east, and then I had to take another call.

Maya, meanwhile, had jumped on the Acela in New York, but got stuck when the train broke down not far outside of the city.

Nia, my personal assistant, took the little girls to play basketball on the half court that Mike Pence had installed in the backyard.

Meena, social media savvy from her work as a producer, huddled with my comms team to create new Kamala HQ messaging for my Twitter account.

Someone suggested we put a coconut tree as a logo in my bio.

“Absolutely fucking not!” cried Meena, dropping her voice as she realized I was on the phone to former presidents in the next room.

She couldn’t help edging toward the door to eavesdrop.

She overheard Bill Clinton yelling for Hillary, who was in another part of their house in New York, and then the two of them struggling to create a conference call.

Their reaction was effusive. Others were more guarded.

To all of them, I said: I’m in it to win.

I intend to earn this. I hope I have your support. I welcome your ideas.

In my notes of the calls:

Barack Obama: Saddle up! Joe did what I hoped he would do. But you have to earn it. Michelle and I are supportive but not going to put a finger on the scale right now. Let Joe have his moment. Think through timing.

The Clintons:

Bill: Oh my God, I’m so relieved! Send me anywhere. Make this your own campaign.

Hillary: We’re thrilled the president endorsed you.

We’ll do whatever we can—we’ll jump on a plane, we’ll get on Amtrak. I want to be part of your war council.

Jim Clyburn , the dean of the Congressional Black Caucus, whose support had lifted Biden to win the South Carolina primary: Let’s go. I’m all in.

Josh Shapiro , governor of Pennsylvania: How you holding up? You will have my support. I have a lot of Trump voters in my state. You have ability to draw them away.

Wes Moore , governor of Maryland: You’ve been loyal. I respect that.

Pete Buttigieg , my primary opponent in 2019, now a close friend: You’re going to be a fantastic president.

Roy Cooper , governor of North Carolina and a fellow former state attorney general: Before you say anything, I’m all in.

Chuck Schumer: I believe we will win with you at the head of the ticket.

Bernie Sanders: I supported Joe because he was the strongest voice for the working class. Please focus on the working class, not just on abortion.

Gretchen Whitmer: I believe you’ll win, but I need to let the dust settle, talk to my colleagues before I make a public statement.

Nancy Pelosi: I’m so sad about Joe. It’s so tragic. My heart is broken. But now it’s you! It’s important there’s a process, we have a great bench. We should have some kind of primary, not an anointment.

J. B. Pritzker: As governor of Illinois, I’m the convention host. I can’t commit.

Gavin Newsom: Hiking. Will call back. (He never did.)

Mark Kelly , senator from Arizona, tweeted his endorsement even before I reached him.

I went from call to call with the clarity that comes when stakes are high, stress is through the roof, and there’s zero ambiguity. Some people I called would offer me support and then ask, “What do you think the process should be?”

If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them. How much more time would it have taken to pull that off? I could imagine the chaos of even trying to decide how to do it, much less actually doing it, as precious days slipped away.

“ This is the process. If anyone wants to challenge me, they’re welcome to jump in. But I intend to earn the support of the majority of the delegates and I’m doing it right now.” Each call took no more than two or three minutes. Outside, in the fierce afternoon heat, a media scrum swarmed.

A few hours into this day of frenzied, nonstop calls, I realized I needed centering.

I stopped everything to call my pastor. Reverend Dr. Amos C.

Brown is a Baptist preacher who marched with Dr. King.

Of course he had already heard the news.

I put him on speaker so the whole table could listen to his wise and sonorous voice, and we prayed.

He talked about Queen Esther, who saved her people when they were threatened.

“You were born for a time such as this,” he said, and I teared up.

He asked God to protect me, my family, my team, and to give us an understanding of our purpose in this moment. It grounded us all.

Then we were back on it. Outside, the sky darkened.

Storm Horncastle, my indispensable social secretary, got us sandwiches, ordered pizza.

Maya abandoned her stalled train and got an Uber for the long drive to DC.

Doug hadn’t been able to get a flight that night, so he arranged a plane to get him to campaign headquarters in Delaware the next day.

He made calls on my behalf from our home in Los Angeles into the evening, until a neighbor came to the door: “It’s about to get serious: you need to come have a drink.

” They tossed down some Johnnie Walker Blue Label as he let his new reality sink in.

At 5:29 p.m., staff alerted me that the British singer-songwriter Charli XCX had posted: Kamala is brat.

Brat was the title of her latest album and identified me with her brand: edgy, imperfect, confident, embracing.

From then on, our rebranded Kamala HQ social media site was awash in her signature color, lime green, and posts supporting us used that color.

At ten p.m., I finally decided it was too late to call anyone else.

We had been going for eight hours. I’d spoken to more than a hundred people.

Every single call had mattered. I’d had to be entirely present for each one, giving out and taking in important information.

Now the dining room table was strewn with scrawled notes, sandwich crusts, and the greasy remains of a pizza with anchovies—my favorite, no one else’s.

I was still in my workout clothes, my unbrushed hair tangled in its scrunchie.

Despite that, I decided we needed to record the moment.

Before I went upstairs to take a long-overdue shower, I gathered my team.

“Things are going to get wild,” I said. “There will be hard days ahead. We have a lot of ground to cover. But you are the best team in the world, and I know we can do this. Let’s take a photo.”

And there we all are: seventeen rumpled, messy, smiling people. Joyful warriors, about to go into the battle of our lives.