Page 79 of 107 Days

They started lining up at sunrise. They arrived by car, by plane, and by train.

We had gone back and forth on where I should give my closing argument. Staff floated all kinds of ideas, from going back to my birthplace of Oakland, to New York City with the Statue of Liberty as my backdrop.

Since we’d failed to entice Trump back to the debate stage, we were brainstorming how to get another big moment, something that might shift the stalemate in the polls. When consensus emerged that the location should be Washington, DC, it was JOD who suggested the Ellipse.

For our Park Service permit, we’d optimistically estimated a crowd of forty thousand.

The official area extending back from the stage was designed to contain that number.

But forty thousand had passed through the magnetometers and filled that space long before evening.

Soon, the overflow area brimmed with a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd.

By the time I spoke, there were people massed along the Mall all the way to the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Independent estimates put the total at seventy-five thousand.

Washington’s soupy summer weather had ceded to the first brisk hints of fall. Red, white, and blue wristbands twinkled in the crisp evening air.

I had said to Adam Frankel that this speech was not an inaugural address.

I was acutely aware that enthusiasm could distract us from the uncertainty of the result.

We needed to hammer home not just what I would do as president, but also that we were not there yet and we still needed to make it happen.

I was polishing my speech right until the moment I walked onstage. The last piece I was determined to get right was the wording of what I wanted to say about being a leader who listens to experts, to people who would be impacted by decisions I made, and to people who disagree with me.

With Ike, my adviser, walking beside me, taking notes on the way to the stage, we landed on the line: “Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at the table.”

Ike took these last-minute revisions to the teleprompter operator, who fed them into the software as I moved to the beginning of the gangway, kissed Doug, took one step toward the stage, and turned back to Ike: “Did it make it into the prompter?”

As “Freedom” pulsed from the giant speakers, I walked out, down that long catwalk, carrying the weight of my belief that we had only seven days left, and everything rested on these last hours.

Thousands of people: familiar, beloved faces—Maya, Tony, Doug—and all the faces that I did not know, full of fervor.

The risers in front of me, packed. The cameras of every network I was familiar with and dozens of foreign networks with which I wasn’t.

Every monument brightly lit, standing testimony to who we are and what we believe, bearing witness to this moment.

“One week from today,” I began, “you will have the chance to make a decision.” I went on to outline the choice and the stakes in the election. Directly behind me, framed by tall American flags on the stage, the facade of the White House glowed in golden light.

I turned slightly to indicate that iconic building.

“In less than ninety days, either Donald Trump or I will be in the Oval Office. On day one, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list. When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list full of priorities on what I will get done for the American people.”

I wanted to infuse this moment with a heightened sense of urgency and contrast. It would reflect my vision of this country, the vision I’d started with, “the promise of America,” the spirit of Normandy and Selma, Seneca Falls and Stonewall, of people fighting for freedom, for equality, for inclusion.

“In seven days we have the power—each of you has the power—to turn the page and start writing the next chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told.”