Page 5 of 107 Days
My campaign rollout would happen that afternoon in Delaware. But first I had other duties.
I was vice president of the United States.
The VP always has a daily schedule crammed with myriad responsibilities.
My staff secretary, Oliver Mittelstaedt, would deliver the schedule and the fat briefing binders for the events of the next day to my residence late the evening before.
The schedule outlined in exquisite detail every move of every person around me, described to the inch and the minute, down to which people will ride the elevator with me at each location.
If there will be a photo line at some point in the day, even the number of camera clicks will be noted, indicating whether the shots are going to be with groups or individuals.
Dozens of people are involved, from Secret Service to White House staff to traveling press, and all of them must be choreographed.
Within this elaborate dance, my moves are indicated by the word “YOU” in bold letters.
Whatever is start time on that sheet, I will be up two hours earlier.
A man can work out, shower, shave, pat down his hair, and grab one of half a dozen identical blue suits.
As any woman in a public-facing job knows, it takes us longer.
Women need to add time for hairstyling, makeup, and more complicated apparel choices, including not repeating the same outfit too often.
For me, pantsuits have been a practical choice: if you’re going to be photographed getting in and out of numerous SUVs and climbing stairs on windy tarmacs, they offer less chance of a wardrobe malfunction.
As trivial as it may seem, women are still judged on all this.
Get it wrong in one direction, you’re a frump.
Go too far in the other, you’re vain and frivolous.
Like our tone of voice or our uninhibited laugh, it has the potential to be noted ahead of the consequential matters we’re engaged in, be it national security or a billion-dollar infrastructure deal.
I’d barely slept.
The mythology of America says anyone can grow up to be president. But most people don’t think that’s really possible for them.
Did I grow up as a kid with a dream to be president? No.
My mother told me I could be anything, and I believed her, but president wasn’t on my list. I was in my first year as a senator before it crossed my mind—oddly, as a result of a throwaway remark.
Doug and I were home in Los Angeles for the weekend, having breakfast at a popular hangout in our neighborhood, when Lawrence O’Donnell, the political commentator, walked in.
He wandered up to our table to talk about the dire consequences of a second Trump term.
“ You should run for president,” he said.
I honestly had not thought about it until that moment.
The idea took root in my imagination, and, as a result of running against Joe for the nomination in 2019, I wound up as his VP.
I now know that there is only one apprenticeship for president of the United States, and that is being vice president. I’d been a heartbeat away for three and a half years. I knew the job; I knew I could do it. I wanted to do it. I wanted to do the work .
I want to keep people safe and help them thrive.
For me, it’s always been about that work.
From the time my mother told me to look after my little sister, I have been a protector.
As a prosecutor, my work was protecting vulnerable people, especially women and children, from sexual predators.
As California’s attorney general I protected our state from cartels, homeowners from predatory banks, and I made the criminal justice data from the second-biggest justice department in the country open, accessible to reporters and researchers, so we could transparently test our system and see what was most effective.
In the Senate, it was getting money to community banks, the most effective funders of small business.
In the White House, I was able to work on so many issues that mattered to me: small business, maternal health, child poverty, climate action, infrastructure, repairing our global alliances.
As president, there was so much more I could do.
I wanted to see Gen Z given the tools they needed to become a new Greatest Generation, and I had so many ideas on how to help them.
I wanted to create a secretary of culture to uplift the immense creative talent of this country.
I wanted to change the way we think about our workforce, to assign value based on an individual’s skill, to open up government jobs to talented people who didn’t necessarily have a college degree.
I wanted to increase home ownership. All these things, and so much more, all grounded in the fundamental values of dignity, fairness, and opportunity.
My thoughts darted from these promising horizons to gnarly thickets of logistics. I was up at six, reviving with a brief workout on the elliptical as I watched the news.
The previous day’s labors had paid off: the Associated Press had surveyed delegates and reported that I had enough support locked in to win the nomination, although that wouldn’t be official till a roll call in fourteen days.
Trump’s public reaction was to claim I’d be easier to defeat than Biden because I was even further to the left—a “dangerous San Francisco radical.” But reports from inside his campaign revealed dismay.
Later that day, Trump whined on Truth Social: “They also mislead [ sic ] the Republican Party, causing it to waste a great deal of time and money” on political advertising targeting a candidate who was no longer his opponent.
After the debate, after the assassination attempt, the Republicans had believed they were on a glide path.
Now a boulder had rolled onto the runway, and they had to recalculate their approach.
At breakfast I found Maya, who’d arrived after midnight.
She was excited for me. She had been by my side, doing the heavy lifting for every campaign, taking time from her own work as a leader at the ACLU, the League of Women Voters, and the Ford Foundation.
She was realistic about what this would mean for me, for our family.
She also knew how well I could do this job, and she knew why I wanted to do it.
Only a sister, raised with the same values and sense of purpose, could see so clearly how I felt.
I had briefings with my team about my events at the White House and what we had to accomplish in Delaware that afternoon.
Some had suggested I do my first big event as a candidate in Pennsylvania, but I pushed back hard.
“There are people in Wilmington who have been working round the clock for months. They’re going to be feeling a lot of emotions. I need to see them first.”
I called David Plouffe, who’d run Obama’s 2008 campaign.
He dove right into the details. I took notes: I don’t have fidelity with what’s happening on the ground.
But I know Trump is doing better than he did in ’16, in ’20.
The assassination attempt pushed his turnout 20 percent.
Whatever you think his turnout will be, add 10 percent.
Don’t listen to anyone who says rely on paid media.
Take risks. TikTok, podcasts—risky but important.
Four things you can’t mess up: Rollout, First Interview, Convention, Debate.
Nail the big moments and don’t sweat the small speed bumps.
At 10:30 a.m., my motorcade left for the White House.
It was College Athlete Day, and a crowd of over a thousand students were gathering on the South Lawn to be recognized as champions in the 2023–2024 National Collegiate Athletic Association season.
Since the president had Covid, I’d been asked to stand in his place.
Now those routine remarks had new significance and needed rapid revisions.
I was determined to recognize the weight of the moment and to honor the president for his achievements.
Stepping up to the podium, I looked across the lawn at the spectacular array of young athletes in front of me.
I could feel their excitement. I told them the president was sorry his Covid recovery was keeping him from being there and went on to say that in one term, he had already surpassed the legacy of most presidents who served two.
I shared a bit of our personal story, telling them I had gotten to know Joe Biden through his son Beau.
Beau and I had been state attorneys general, me in California and he in Delaware.
In the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2008, he had stood with me against the big banks who had defrauded so many borrowers, people who’d lost homes.
I’d pulled California out of the national negotiations when the banks proposed a settlement that I thought was crumbs on the table given the harm caused by their malpractice and fraud.
Delaware didn’t have nearly as many folks underwater as we did in California, but it did have a lot of influential banks who wanted to get out of their mess by paying the least possible penalty.
In an act of political courage and principle, Beau was by my side as we stared down the big banks, and I eventually got $20 billion for Californians who’d been harmed.
I will always admire Beau for taking that risk.