his charming moments. It paid off: when Biden
tapped Harris as his running mate, the choice was
broadcast to supporters via text message instead
of leaking to the press, allowing the campaign to
channel the excitement over the nomination of the
first Black woman Vice President into hard cash:
$26 million in 24 hours, a tremendous fundraising
spree. By the fall, Biden outspent Trump nearly
2 to 1 on the airwaves in battleground states. Dig-
ital organizers recruited more than 200,000 vol-
unteers to send hundreds of millions of text mes-
sages and phone calls.
He also successfully sidestepped most of the
attacks Trump could use against him. Biden em-
braced a robust climate-and-jobs plan developed
with the help of top youth climate leaders and
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but re-
jected the idea of a Green New Deal. He supported
racial-justice protests, but didn’t join calls to “de-
fund the police.” Trump tried to attack Biden as
part of the “radical left,” but it rang hollow; call-
ing him a “socialist” didn’t stick (though the at-
tacks may have resonated with Cubans in Florida).
Trump tried bullying Biden at a debate, which
backfired. Circulating rumors about the former
Vice President’s son Hunter failed. “Stability has
been the hallmark of this campaign, in the pri-
mary and the general,” says Biden’s longtime poll-
ster John Anzalone.
The campaign stayed focused on the states
he needed to win, without getting distracted by
Democratic pipe dreams. His advisers always
knew that the path to victory wound through
the Upper Midwest, so Biden and his surrogates
barnstormed through Wisconsin, Michigan and
Pennsylvania in the final weeks of the campaign.
The plan was to boost urban and suburban turn-
out that had sagged in 2016, while cutting into
Trump’s rural margins.
This strategy required patience and fortitude
through what campaign brass knew would be a long
election week. Early returns would show Trump in
the lead in key states, top staff warned, and it could
take days to count the mail-in votes coming out of
Democratic strongholds. It was all about sticking to
the plan and staying the course. Or, as Biden and
Harris both tweeted: “Keep the faith.”
It turned out Biden had been right all along:
after four years of chaos and division, America
didn’t want a revolution; it just wanted a break.
And so, armed with a stable campaign in unstable
times, and a comforting message in a disquieting
moment, Joe Biden completed his slow and
steady march to victory, exactly as he said he
would. —With reporting by TESSA BERENSON/
WASHINGTON and LESLIE DIckSTEIN and JuLIA
ZORTHIAN/NEW YORk □
ELECTION
2020
Vice President
Biden and Senator
Harris accepting
their party’s
nomination on
Aug. 20
PHOTOGRAPH BY
ANDREW HARNIK
