That moment was nearly four years in the mak-
ing. Just hours after Trump took the oath of office,
millions of activists poured into the streets for the
Women’s March, considered the largest single-day
protest in U.S. history. Then they returned home
and started organizing with their neighbors. These
new activists, many of them women, ran for office in
record numbers; by 2018, their energy flipped the
House of Representatives, along with six state leg-
islative chambers and seven governor’s seats. By the
time the presidential primary rolled around, the base
was primed and ready.
When Biden joined the race in April 2019, it was
as an old soldier stepping into one final battle. After
eight years of serving as Vice President to the most
popular figure in the party, and with decades of deep
relationships to build on, it was no surprise that polls
registered him as the front runner. The President’s
impeachment—over a “do us a favor” call to the Pres-
ident of Ukraine—flowed from efforts to sabotage
the possibility of a Biden candidacy; the President
regarded him as the only Democrat who could beat
him. Yet as the race began, the presumptive favorite
seemed a step slow and three years too late.
“You don’t need to do this,” Biden’s close friend
Delaware Senator Chris Coons recalls telling him.
“But does the country need me to do this?” Biden
replied. “Yes,” Coons told him. “You are the candi-
date who can win.”
Biden launched his campaign with a video that
called the fight against Trump “a battle for the soul
of this nation.” He called Trump’s four years an aber-
ration. “But if we give Donald Trump eight years in
the White House, he will forever and fundamentally
alter the character of this nation, who we are,” he
said. “And I cannot stand by and watch that happen.”
This was the story Joe Biden told about America,
a story that barely changed in the ensuing 18 months.
In his telling, our country is defined by its funda-
mental decency, and that decency—more than policy
or ideology or economy—was on the ballot. Amer-
ica was a nation full of honorable people who had
made a mistake by electing the wrong President, but
given half a chance they’d return to their true char-
acter. Trump ran on one vision of American great-
ness; Biden sought a return to American goodness.
In a crowded field of movement leaders like Sand-
ers, policy wonks like Senator Elizabeth Warren, and
history makers like Buttigieg and Senator Kamala
Harris, Biden could barely pack a room. But he made
a key decision early: to hold firm to the center while
his rivals raced to the left. As they argued over the de-
tails of Medicare for All, Biden defended Obama’s Af-
fordable Care Act. While they gave rousing speeches
about “revolution” and “big structural change,” he
reassured Americans that he could carry them back
to a calmer, less politically divisive past.
At first, nobody seemed to be listening. Biden trailed
Buttigieg and Sanders in fund raising and fervor. He
came in fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire. He
seemed too old, too white, too centrist, too yesterday.
“The consistent criticism was, ‘Oh, Biden’s not woke
enough, he doesn’t have enough followers on Twitter,
he’s not snappy enough,’ ” Coons says. “Joe has consis-
tently seen who Middle America still is. And it’s easy
to miss that if the first thing you do is look at Twitter.”
So Biden plowed ahead, handshake by hand-
shake, hug by hug. On the trail, he did what he has
done for more than 40 years, listening as voters
confided in him about the worst moments of their
lives, because they already knew about his: his wife
and daughter killed in a car accident on their way to
buy Christmas presents in 1972; his son Beau felled
by brain cancer in the prime of his life, in 2015.
In the elevator on the way to his New York Times
editorial- board interview, a security guard named
Jacquelyn turned to him and said, “You’re my fa-
vorite.” Biden didn’t get the Times endorsement,
but got a selfie with Jacquelyn. And it turned out
the loyalty of people like her would be the most im-
portant factor in the race.
The campaign kept insisting that if they could just
make it to South Carolina, they’d be back in the run-
ning. With the help of an endorsement from a South
Carolina kingmaker, Representative Jim Clyburn,
Biden carried the state with decisive support from
Black voters. “It was as important for him to win South
WYO.
3
WASH.
12
TEXAS
38
S.D.
3
ORE.
7
OKLA.
7
N.D.
3
N.M.
5
NEV.
6
NEB.
4 1
MONT.
3
KANS.
6
IDAHO
4
UTAH
6 COLO.
9
CALIF.
55
ARIZ.
11
ALASKA
3
HAWAII
4
ELECTION
2020
OPENING SPREAD: AFP/GETTY IMAGES; FOLLOWING SPREAD: AP
