The Final Hours: Why Biden Really Decided to Drop Out of the Race

In the end, he was alone.

Confined to a spare bedroom in his vacation home and fighting off bouts of coughing from Covid, President Biden was exhausted when he turned in for the night on Saturday, July 20. Whether he slept soundly or fitfully or not at all, people close to him said he took the long hours by himself to mull over the historic decision he was about to make.

He had just been through a brutal two days in Rehoboth Beach, Del., as he huddled with his wife, Jill Biden, and his closest aides, who rotated from a screened-in porch to a sitting area off the dining room.

Steve Ricchetti, the president’s eyes and ears on Capitol Hill, and Mike Donilon, his chief strategist, had shared internal polling with the president that Saturday that mirrored what Americans had been seeing for weeks: Mr. Biden was falling behind, nationally and in key battleground states.

There was still a path to victory, they advised him, but the fight would be ugly. The president would be pitted against his donors, half of his party in Congress and Democratic voters who had concluded that he was too old to win.

For more than three weeks, Mr. Biden had insisted he would stay in the race. Only the “Lord Almighty,” he said, could get him to drop out.

But by that Saturday evening, something had shifted.

It was not just about the polls, people close to Mr. Biden say. Despite everything, Mr. Biden believed he could still claim the Democratic nomination and beat former President Donald J. Trump. Aides say that he still believes that.