Inside the final hours of Biden’s 2024 campaign

Joe Biden’s reelection campaign met a lonely end on Sunday when, sick with Covid and surrounded by only his closest family members and advisers at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, he posted a brief statement on social media telling the world he had decided to stand down from the 2024 Democratic party ticket.

In the three weeks since his disastrous turn on the debate stage in Atlanta, the 81-year-old president fought hard to convince his party and the American public that he was not only fully fit and ready to take on Donald Trump once again but to serve another four years in the White House.

But no matter how much he tried to persuade anxious lawmakers on Capitol Hill or how defiant a tone he struck in interviews, the gaffes kept on coming, including an especially embarrassing moment at the Nato summit where he called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “President Putin”.

As more and more Democrats came forward publicly and privately to call on him to “pass the torch”, Biden appeared to grow more and more isolated, with only his most trusted advisers taken into his confidence.

The assassination attempt on Trump followed by the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee provided a brief distraction but, in the midst of all of that noise, Biden was struck down with Covid during a campaign trip to Las Vegas, forcing him further into isolation.

It was there, recovering at his Delaware beach retreat with only his wife, First Lady Dr Jill Biden, for company, that Biden finally accepted his number was up.

His decision to quit “happened in the last 48 hours”, an unnamed senior aide told CNN late on Sunday, as the president took calls sounding out his closest aides and his family members throughout the weekend.