Page 44 of 107 Days

I’d had about two hours’ sleep when the alarm on my phone went off in my New York hotel room.

The night before, Doug and I had gone from the debate stage to the holding room where the entire team was assembled.

I grabbed Philippe and kissed him with gratitude.

Over the heads in the group, I saw Lorraine crying.

The tough taskmaster of my staff and daily agenda, she never cries.

“You really do care about more than just my schedule!” I teased.

Brian, usually dead serious, was grinning ear to ear.

“I checked off all the numbers on my bingo card,” he said. “You made every point.”

Later, Opal started playing Taylor Swift songs on her phone. Swift had just posted her thoughtful endorsement: “I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos,” she wrote, signing off her post “Childless Cat Lady.”

The Harris–Walz campaign watch party at the Cherry Street Pier was thronged with celebrating supporters.

I knew very well that this election would not be decided by a single event, a single debate victory.

When I took the mic, I told everyone that it had been a good night, but tomorrow was back to work.

Then I left for New York. By the time I collapsed on the bed in my hotel room, it was close to two a.m.

I was up just a couple of hours later to prepare for a somber day of three memorials: New York, Shanksville, the Pentagon.

At 7:50 a.m., I was back in the motorcade, rolling to Ground Zero for the ceremony honoring the victims of 9/11.

I’d been there as vice president every year except during Covid.

Hundreds of people in black stood in silence, the memorial’s waterfalls the only audible sound in the heart of that busy city.

I stood next to the president. Michael Bloomberg was on his left, Donald Trump on the other side of the mayor.

Trump and I shook hands. He said, “You were great last night.” I didn’t know what to say in return, except, “You, too.”

It was a warm, clear, beautiful morning, just as it had been in 2001. The NYPD honor guard began a solemn drumbeat. At 8:46 a.m., the moment the first plane hit the North Tower, the drumbeat ceased. We all fell silent in memory of the dead.

Twenty-three years earlier, I was a young city attorney in San Francisco, getting an early start on the treadmill at my gym before heading to the office.

There were three giant TVs in the gym, and as they played the moment when the first plane hit the tower, I turned off the treadmill and stepped down to follow the coverage.

I remember the music in the gym stopped.

Everyone stood side by side, watching in disbelief.

The reading of the names is a melancholy and moving tradition. The president and I departed as quietly and reverently as we could, about an hour into that litany of loss: we needed to leave for Shanksville, Pennsylvania, to commemorate the heroes of Flight 93.

The route from Johnstown–Cambria County Airport to the Shanksville memorial site runs through cornfields, wooded hills, and forests of Trump signs: TRUMP 2024 . VOTE REPUBLICAN . AMERICA MUST END ABORTION .

It was a small crowd at Shanksville. About two hundred had gathered, many of them family or friends of those who perished on the flight. The president and I laid a wreath at the memorial and then walked out to the crash site.

I was taken aback that on that day, and in this place, I would see a man in the crowd wearing a bright red shirt emblazoned with messages insulting me in the most vulgar terms. KOMMY KAMALA SUCKS and ABORT HARRIS were the printable parts, interspersed with lewd sexual references.

This was such a solemn memorial service. It made me immensely sad for the heroes of Flight 93 and for the people who loved and honored them. They didn’t need to be subjected to his indecent bile. Surely, I thought, this cannot be who we are .

Every year after the memorial service, Joe made it a point to stop at the Shanksville Volunteer Fire Department, where a cross made from the salvaged remains of the crashed plane stands outside the firehouse. That department was the first responder to the crash.

Inside, the volunteer firefighters and their families milled about or sat at tables. Many wore MAGA hats and Trump T-shirts. Some refused to shake my hand; others offered me their backs.

I had a lot of mixed feelings about being there.

It was a solemn occasion, and I didn’t want to intrude at such a moment upon people who saw me through the lens of Fox and right-wing media.

I knew I would never get their vote. But I didn’t want to write off the opportunity to connect with a fellow American, if there was any way I could reach across the divide and share a human moment.

Sometimes, as my motorcade moved through streets lined with supporters, I’d look out the window and see the one or two scowling people, arms outstretched, middle fingers raised. It pained me, especially if they had children standing alongside.

There are many good reasons that the Secret Service would have objected had I stopped the motorcade to speak with them.

But I often wanted to. I wished I could ask every one of them, What are you angry about?

What about me makes you angry? Is it your health care, your grocery bills, a backbreaking job that doesn’t pay what you’re worth—and what can I do to help you?

An impossible wish, since I didn’t even control the lock on my car door.

And there were always people waiting for me—sometimes for hours—at the next destination.

One woman at the firehouse was willing to make eye contact and exchange a greeting, even though it was clear that her husband wanted nothing to do with me.

I kept the conversation going, and I learned that the couple had suffered the loss of their child.

There is no blue or red, no Democrat or Republican, in the experience of grief and bereavement.

They spoke tenderly of their child, and I shared my own experience of loss, watching my mother undone by the ravages of cancer.

That brief interaction is the kind of moment that sustains my belief that we share more than we realize.

We just have to be willing to look for it and see it.

And then I glanced across to the far side of the room, where Joe was sharing a joke with some guys in MAGA hats. One of them took his hat off and offered it to Joe.

Don’t take it.

He took it.

Don’t put it on.

He put it on.

Cameras clicked. Within hours, the picture was all over: Joe Biden in a MAGA hat, with the caption “Biden endorses Trump over Harris.”

I took the microphone that was offered to me and said, “We may vote for different people, but the people who attacked us on 9/11 couldn’t care less who we voted for. We were all Americans that day. As we are today. And I hope we can remember that.”