American Battleground: How ‘brat summer’ set up Kamala Harris’ remarkable run

Joe Biden’s withdrawal was almost Trumpian in that it was unexpected, unprecedented and released unpredictable forces. Chief among them, the person the outgoing president tapped to replace him on the ticket, Vice President Kamala Harris.

“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your president.” Joe Biden is out. More than five decades after he won a county council seat in Wilmington, he is less than two hours away at his Delaware beach home when he gives up his fight to hold the Oval Office. His decision is made on a weekend spent with his family and closest advisers, and in such secrecy even people close to him are telling CNN’s MJ Lee just hours earlier there is no way he will quit. They were not deceiving her, she will conclude, they just didn’t know. “The inner circle that was always really small got even smaller,” she says of the endgame. The tipping point appears to have been a talk with House Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi, in which she predicted a Biden loss would produce an avalanche of defeats for other Democrats fighting for control of Congress. As Lee puts it, “She said to him, per our reporting, the polling shows you’re going to lose and you’re going to bring the House down with you.” Months later, Pelosi will tell The Guardian that she and Biden have not spoken since and that some of his allies have not forgiven her. Biden announces his decision on social media on July 21, then talks about it on television a few days later.