Behind the Curtain: The chaos campaign

State of play: Republicans want President Biden to resign now, and for Vice President Kamala Harris to be held complicit for concealing his condition.

• Many Democrats want to simply and swiftly coronate Harris, pair her with a swing-state moderate like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro or Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), and make age and abortion the two preeminent topics of a new 2024 campaign.

Democrats have four weeks to pick a new ticket and completely reboot their campaign against a former president riding post-convention momentum.

• The Democratic convention opens in Chicago 28 days from today. Election Day is 106 days away.

How it happened: We told you Thursday in a breaking "Behind the Curtain" column that top Democrats were privately telling us they expected Biden to decide to drop out of the presidential race, as soon as this weekend.

• It happened right on schedule yesterday with a 1:46pm ET tweet — one minute after a video call where he told senior staff of the White House and campaign. Harris, White House chief of staff Jeff Zients and campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon had gotten earlier heads-up calls.

A Biden friend, pointing to the president's rage over last week's leaks, barbs and lectures from Democrats at all levels, told us: "It was fury for a while. Then he surrendered to reality. He's a professional."

• In the end, it was the data, including grim polling from swing states. "No one was able to produce data points that showed him winning," said a Democratic insider who has been at the center of the party's frantic conversations since Biden's debate debacle 25 days ago. "They tried everything. There was no path."

The man who'd spent 50 years as a fingertip politician — a longtime hugger — was unusually alone as he threw in the towel, isolated with COVID at his beach house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

• A source says Biden began coming to a decision Saturday evening. With him in Rehoboth Beach were top political strategist Mike Donilon, counselor Steve Ricchetti, White House deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini and Anthony Bernal, senior adviser to the first lady.
• "The whole party is breathing a sigh of relief," the Democratic insider said.

The big picture: As N.Y. Times columnist Nick Kristof presciently put it this weekend, this "feels like August 1914, a fulcrum in the sweep of events. These days may have moved the arc of America and the world, with history lurching in competing directions in ways that may shape our course for decades."

What's next: Biden quickly endorsed Vice President Harris for the nomination, as did the Clintons. But the Democratic Party is leaving open the possibility of a competitive nomination process. Former President Obama held off on an endorsement, saying: "We will be navigating uncharted waters in the days ahead."

• As we told you in a column two weeks ago, Harris will be almost impossible to beat for the nomination, thanks to endorsements, money, optics and 2028 politics. Given the Democratic base, are you really going to take down the first Black American, the first South Asian American and the first woman to be elected vice president?
• Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) is making noises about re-registering as a Democrat to take on Harris. There may be other flurries around Democrats who know talk of challenging Harris would bring huge publicity.

James Carville, who two weeks ago had advocated for regional town halls to help determine a nominee, now tells us it's too late for such a process. "You can just feel it: Let's go," he said. "I don't have any sense there's time or appetite."

• Harris immediately enjoyed "broad, swift consolidation" among major Democratic donors, who are feeling optimism for the first time in weeks, the N.Y. Times reports.
• But Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont, the first Democratic senator to call for Biden to drop out, told CBS' Norah O'Donnell during yesterday's breaking coverage that Harris would "be strengthened by a process that's seen as open." He contended the party should "take advantage of the extraordinary energy that's been unleashed by the president's decision ... and show that we're confident about engaging everyday Democrats to participate."

Carville said the expected convention photo of Harris with Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and their large blended family will send a message of "change, youth, vigor, different — every f***ing word that counts is in that photograph."

• "The most thunderous sound in politics is the sound of a turning page," Carville added.

What we're hearing: Many top Democrats have reservations about Harris, including the fact that few loyalists have risen with her — a rarity in politics. Two months into the administration, Biden named her to lead diplomatic and other efforts to reduce illegal migration at the Southwest border — one of the top issues former President Trump will try to use against her.

• Republicans will also say Harris was part of a cover-up about Biden's decline, and therefore was complicit in putting America at risk.
• Watch for Trump to claim the fix is in by the "real powers" — an argument Elon Musk made mere minutes after Biden's announcement. Some of the claims are contradictory. David Sacks, a top Silicon Valley venture capitalist who spoke at the GOP convention in Milwaukee, took to Musk's X to assert Harris had "staged a coup."

Threat level: Democrats tell us Harris instantly puts reproductive rights at the center of the campaign — a potential game-changer. Harris — age 59, making her 19 years younger than Trump — will try to turn the age and fitness issue on the GOP. And as a former San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, she'll push a "prosecutor vs. convicted felon" frame.

• Trump officials know there's danger for him in debating a woman with historic status. "When women confront Trump, he can be impolitic and imprudent, and say politically dangerous things," one GOP insider told us. So Trump could alienate women and many other non-MAGA voters the campaign is eyeing. Plus Harris could look better-versed on reproductive rights, and more evocative of the future than the past.

The other side: Republican officials won't admit it publicly, but they know they were better off running against Biden. The Atlantic's Tim Alberta wrote in a lengthy article before the convention that they're "all but praying that he remains their opponent."

• Chris LaCivita, co-manager of Trump's campaign, told us his candidate "survived an assassin's bullet. The last thing we are worrying about is Laffin' Kamala" — the nickname Trump recently gave her. "You can move the chairs on a sinking boat all you want ... doesn't change the result," LaCivita added.
• We obtained a 12-page internal memo showing the Trump campaign was preparing for the possibility of a Biden alternative back in May — with section headings that include "Act of God," "Insider Rebellion" and "Popular Uprising."

The bottom line: If Harris loses, history will likely be harsh on Biden for running again, on aides who sheltered him, and on Democrats who wanted to coronate Harris rather than letting a process play out.

• Alex Thompson contributed reporting.