Page 7 of 107 Days
Insta would have a Millennial flavor, X would be directed at political junkies, and Facebook would target the Boomers.
Outside of the campaign, we already had the KHive, an online presence that had sprung up organically in 2017 and swarmed back, in force, to support me throughout the campaign.
These digitally savvy fans, most of whom I did not know, had an encyclopedic knowledge of my record and would vigorously rebut anything inaccurate that was posted about me.
We put polls in the field that day. There was an urgent need to find out what voters knew about me and what their impressions were so that we could shape our messaging.
I knew I needed to leave these details in the hands of others.
We would fail if I tried to micromanage them.
I’d just have to go with God and trust the team.
There’s no such thing as a low-key event in a presidential campaign.
I had to be 100 percent present for the thousands of voters I’d be meeting every day.
I couldn’t be constantly evaluating and questioning everyone else.
It wouldn’t be good for their confidence or my peace of mind.
Nonetheless, the buck stopped with me, and I was aware of that from the get-go.
At five p.m., it was time to move to the stage. Over a floor speaker came Joe Biden’s raspy voice. I could sense enormous effort. He was trying to sound upbeat, but you could hear the hurt as he hesitated over his words.
“If I didn’t have Covid, I’d be sitting there with you—standing there with you.
I—I’m so proud of what you’ve all done. And—but this Covid has been keeping me out of—out of people’s hair for the next three or four days.
But I’m going to be on the road, and I’m not going anywhere.
I’m going—it’s—it’s kept me away a little bit, but, you know, I want people to remember that what we have done has been incredible, and we get—so much more we’re going to get done.
And so, I want to say hello to Kamala if she can hear me.
I know she’s going to be speaking shortly.
And I want to say to the team: Embrace her.
She’s the best. I wanted to call today to thank everybody—everybody in this effort.
I know yesterday’s news is surprising and it’s hard for you to hear, but it was the right thing to do. ”
He gained speed as he went on, praising the sacrifices of the campaign workers and promising to continue to bring the fight to Trump in his final months in the White House. The applause, when he finished, was warm and heartfelt. I hoped it lifted his spirits.
All the questioning about his capacity had wounded him badly.
He didn’t want to get out of this race; he didn’t want to stop being president.
I was determined that he at least have his dignity.
My feelings for him were grounded in warmth and loyalty, but they had become complicated, over time, with hurt and disappointment.
At that moment, the warmth predominated.
So when I took the stage, I spent the first third of my remarks effusively praising him before I launched into my own campaign speech.
I would do that for several weeks until my campaign strategists urged me to stop: “It’s time this campaign was about you.
” It was David Plouffe who would eventually put it to me more bluntly: “People hate Joe Biden.”
It was hard for me to hear that.
The rapport between Joe and me was genuine.
For two people who seemingly couldn’t have been more different, our values were incredibly aligned.
We cared about working people, we’d given our lives to public service.
We would outdo each other quoting sayings from our parents, and we both liked to secretly and affectionately make fun of the British, drawing on our respective colonial ancestry—his Irish, mine Jamaican and Indian.
Before the campaign got into gear, we met regularly for lunch in the private dining room just off the Oval Office.
He’d have a club sandwich; I’d have grilled fish.
And then, with a conspiratorial grin, he’d order us up a chocolate shake or a sundae.
We discussed everything from my bilateral meetings with leaders like France’s Emmanuel Macron, the Philippines’ Bongbong Marcos, and Ghana’s Nana Akufo-Addo, to the latest political gossip from the Hill.
But Plouffe was a realist. He knew that the president’s approval rating of 41 percent was a ball and chain dragging on my campaign. It would take time, too much time, before I acknowledged this truth.
But what I knew for certain: I faced an opponent who majored in malice, and I was damned if I was going to join the chorus of cruelty.
Our administration had achieved great things: getting Covid under control; creating fifteen million new jobs; standing up for democracy at home and abroad, passing bipartisan legislation that nobody thought would be possible in such a bitterly divided Congress, including a bipartisan infrastructure bill and the most significant climate-saving measures ever.
In this first speech, in many that followed, and when elected president, I was determined to recognize Joe Biden for that.
Then I turned to the job at hand: defining my own campaign and reminding people what I brought to the table.
“Before I was elected as vice president, before I was elected as United States senator, I was the elected attorney general of California. And before that, I was a courtroom prosecutor. In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds…”
This politically savvy crowd was several jumps ahead; they knew where I was going and loved it. They signaled their approval with laughter and applause.
“Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So, hear me when I say… I know Donald Trump’s type.”
The crowd exploded.
There are phrases in English that can do a lot of work for you.
“I know his type” is one of them. We’ve all said it about someone of low character whom we’ve personally known.
It chimes with memories of bad boyfriends, obnoxious bosses, shady businessmen.
The kind of person you warn your kid not to befriend.
I went on: “As a young prosecutor, when I was in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office in California, I specialized in cases involving sexual abuse. Donald Trump was found liable by a jury for committing sexual abuse.
“As attorney general of California, I took on one of our country’s largest for-profit colleges and put it out of business. Donald Trump ran a for-profit college, Trump University, that was forced to pay $25 million to the students it scammed.
“As district attorney, to go after polluters, I created one of the first environmental justice units in our nation. Donald Trump stood in Mar-a-Lago and told Big Oil lobbyists he would do their bidding for a $1 billion campaign contribution.”
At this example of Trump’s massive corruption, booing erupted.
“During the foreclosure crisis, I took on the big Wall Street banks and won $20 billion for California families, holding those banks accountable for fraud. Donald Trump was just found guilty of thirty-four counts of fraud.”
Pivoting, I said that our campaign was about more than the stark contrast between my record and Trump’s.
The campaign, I stressed, was about two very different versions of our country going forward, one focused on the future, one mired in the past. Trump wanted to take us back to failed trickle-down economics that had never done a thing to lift the middle class and instead brought only more inequity.
He romanticized a time when freedom and rights were limited and denied to so many Americans.
I was born into a fight for freedom and stood in that tradition.
Freedom to vote, to control one’s own body, to breathe clean air and drink clean water, to be free from the fear of weapons of war on our city streets and in our children’s classrooms. Freedom from anxiety about health care costs, childcare costs, a retirement spent in poverty.
Freedom to afford a home, build wealth, provide our kids a good education.
The freedom not just to get by but to get ahead. And the freedom to simply be.
Finally, I wrapped up with the kind of call-and-response familiar to me from the church of my childhood:
“Do we believe in the promise of America?”
The crowd affirmed it.
“And are we willing to fight for it?”
“Yes!” they cried.
“And when we fight…”
“We win!”