Copyright 2021 by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Crown and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Hardback ISBN9780525574224
Ebook ISBN9780525574248
crownpublishing.com
Cover design: Christopher Brand
Cover image: Jim Watson
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AUTHORS NOTE
The day before we finished work on this book, President Donald Trump incited his followers to march to the Capitol, storm into the peoples house, and commit acts of terrorism against the United States of America. We were enraged and heartbroken over the meaningless violence, the desecration of the Capitol Buildingwhere we have spent years reporting on Congressand the attempt to defile our democracy.
As the meeting place of the first branch of American governmentthe branch closest to the citizenrythe Capitol is both the heart of our republic and the most recognizable symbol of democracy across the globe. Any attack on it is an assault on our liberty, our popular sovereignty, our culture, and our way of life. Sadly, the president found aid and comfort in the voices and votes of a shocking number of Republican lawmakers willing to support his delusional and dangerous attempt to overturn the will of the electorate.
He was not robbed. There was no fraud. He tried to deny the American people their sacred right to self-governance by every means available to him. We have no doubt that barrels of ink will be spilled on Trumps failed effort to subvert democracy and cling to power in contravention of the rule of law. Likewise, journalists and historians will have their hands full examining the abnormalities and perversities of Trumps presidency, right through a lame-duck period defined by desperation and denial.
This book is about the reality of the 2020 election. It is about Joe Bidens victory over Trump. We believe that the health of our republic rests on an informed citizenry having as much accurate information as possible, and this book takes readers behind the scenes of the Biden campaign, the Trump campaign, and the campaigns of several of Bidens Democratic primary rivals.
It is the story of a candidate whose life, politics, and message best met the moment, as judged by the collective wisdom of the 155 million-plus Americans who cast ballots. Bidens victory was conclusive, but, at the same time, it was also very, very closecloser than Democrats or independent prognosticators expected.
While it is valuable to look at the popular vote totals to gauge national sentimentBidens 81 million-plus votes were a recordpresidential elections are decided by the electoral college. Candidates and their aides steer campaigns with that in mind, competing almost exclusively in a handful of swing states that effectively determine the winner. That system is unjust in the eyes of many Americans, but it is enshrined in the Constitution and cannot be changed without two-thirds votes in each chamber of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states. Not only is the Electoral College here to stay for the foreseeable future, but Biden won, without any doubt, under its rules.
He did that by articulating a rationale for his candidacy that focused on what he was uniquely positioned to deliver for the American people. It was premised not on a complex set of policy initiatives, but on a simple promise to restore the soul of this nation. In his third bid for the presidency, he bet that voters would turn away from the trend of electing outsider candidates vowing to change the system and toward an insider who could improve their lives by applying his experience and values to that system. Biden presented himself as a man of character, compassion, and competencetraits he portrayed as absent in Trumpand he stuck to his story through both a brutal Democratic primary that almost knocked him out and a general election that unfolded against the backdrop of a plague and societal upheaval over systemic racial injustice.
But all along the way, Biden caught breaksat the Iowa caucuses, in the pivotal South Carolina primary, and from an incumbent president who mishandled the major crisis he faced. Those breaks, which he capitalized on, contributed to his victory. But after all the votes were counted, Biden was hardly alone in finding himself fortunate. During the election, and in its aftermath, the nations institutions and its democratic values were put under extreme duress. The Founding Fathers fashioned a republic that could keep power dispersed, meet the exigencies of any moment, and withstand enormous pressures by bending without breaking. Their glorious architecture held firm to ensure the transfer of power to a duly elected president.
Luck, it has been said, is the residue of design. It was for Joe Biden, and for the republic.
Jonathan Allen & Amie Parnes,
January 2021
PROLOGUE
Two years after Hillary Clintons defeat at the hands of Donald Trump, the remnants of her political team gathered in the spartan conference room of her office high above Forty-fifth Street in Midtown Manhattan. What had been a billion-dollar, thousand-person operation had since been downsized to little more than half a dozen longtime aides with experience in fundraising, grassroots organizing, communications, and tending to Clintons personal needs.
But even this group of ride-or-die Hillary loyalists wasnt ready for what the leader of their little pack was about to unload on them. It was December 5, 2018, and, with the Democratic victory in the midterm elections now in the rearview mirror, they expected the discussion that day to focus on how Hillary could help the partys candidates. They assumed she wouldnt make a third bid for the presidency.
Her defeat in 2016 had been so devastating, so shocking, and so close. Donald Trump had won the electoral college by capturing three Rust Belt bastions of the Democratic blue wallPennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsinby a grand total of 77,736 votes. Her fans believed shed been robbed of the presidency, and her detractors blamed her for Trumps victory. Two years later, some of her aides were already fielding recruiting calls from prospective Democratic presidential campaigns, and that created a tension point that Huma Abedin, Hillarys closest adviser, wanted to put out in the open.
Hillary was absent from the meeting because she had been called away that morning to attend the funeral service of President George H. W. Bush at Washington National Cathedral alongside her husband, President Bill Clinton, the other living presidents and first ladies, and just about every other current and former federal official of note in the nations capital. But there was important business to discuss, and the meeting went on without herin fact, the most pressing matter might have best been talked about without Hillary in the room.
Departing from the scripted agenda at the start, Abedin made a special point of noting that one of their colleagues, Adam Parkhomenko, had promoted the presidential ambitions of Michael Avenatti, a lawyer and tormentor of Trump who had rocketed to fame by representing porn star Stormy Daniels and leveling a string of allegations against the president that gave him nearly round-the-clock access to twenty-four-hour cable television for months. It was also well known among the group that Emmy Ruiz, an expert in field organizing who had developed a reputation as a star operative on Hillarys two bids for president, was taking calls from several presidential campaigns interested in acquiring her services for the 2020 campaign.
