One candidate was shot in the ear — an assassin's bullet putting him inches from death. The other quarantined with COVID — then quit his campaign, reluctantly, abruptly.

• That was just eight days of the wildest and weirdest presidential campaign of our lifetime, Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei write in a Behind the Curtain column.

Why it matters: America is tossed into tumult unseen since the '60s.

⚡ State of play: Republicans want President Biden to resign now, and for Vice President 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 President Biden to decide to drop out of the presidential race, as soon as this weekend.

• It happened right on schedule yesterday with a 1:46 p.m. 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, Del.

• A source says Biden began coming to a decision Saturday evening. With him in Rehoboth Beach were chief campaign 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 over the 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."

• Column continues below.

President 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, Mike and Jim write.

• Former President Obama held off on an endorsement, saying: "We will be navigating uncharted waters in the days ahead."

Between the lines: 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 said 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.
• 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, yesterday took to Musk's X to assert that 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 concealed his condition, and on Democrats who wanted to coronate Harris rather than letting a process play out.

• Share this column ... Alex Thompson contributed reporting.

Go deeper: Jon Meacham sketches in the N.Y. Times the story that "history will tell of Joe Biden. With American democracy in an hour of maximum danger ... [h]e staved off an authoritarian threat at home, rallied the world against autocrats abroad, laid the foundations for decades of prosperity, managed the end of a once-in-a-century pandemic ... History and fate brought him to the pinnacle in a late season in his life, and in the end, he respected fate — and he respected the American people." (Gift link)

President Biden hesitated to drop his re-election campaign in part because he and his senior advisers worried that Vice President Harris wasn't up to taking on Donald Trump, Alex Thompson reports from three Biden aides familiar with recent talks about his plans.

• Why it matters: Biden, 81, ultimately decided to withdraw under pressure from the party and endorsed Harris. But his private anxieties reflect broader questions among some Democratic leaders about Harris as their nominee this November.

This next week will be critical for Harris, 59, to prove doubters wrong as she moves quickly to try to clear the field of potential challengers for the Democratic nomination.

• Harris' time as vice president has been occasionally rocky, defined in part by staff turnover and retreating from politically risky responsibilities.

🔎 The intrigue: The relationship between the vice president's office and the West Wing has often been tense.

• At times, Harris aides suspected Biden's team didn't want to give Harris opportunities to shine to avoid her being seen as a viable alternative to Biden ahead of his re-election bid.

Keep reading.

A person familiar with Vice President Harris' day tells reporters she "had multiple phone conversations with the president prior to his announcement that he would not be seeking reelection and would instead endorse her."

• 📱 "Surrounded by family and staff at the Vice President's Residence, she spent more than 10 hours Sunday placing calls to over 100 party leaders, Members of Congress, governors, labor leaders, and leaders of advocacy and civil rights organizations. On each of those calls, the Vice President made clear that she was extremely grateful for the President's endorsement, but plans to work hard to earn the Democratic nomination in her own right."

"One of the calls was to her pastor, Amos C. Brown, who, along with his wife [Jane E. Brown], prayed over her," the person added.

• 🍕 "Throughout the day, the Vice President wore a hooded Howard University sweatshirt, workout sweats and sneakers. Amid the many calls, she took time to arrange both lunch and dinner for the assembled aides. The menu was salad and sandwiches for lunch, and pizza and salad for dinner. The Vice President's pizza came with anchovies, her go-to topping."

💰 Stat du jour: The Harris campaign has raised $49.6 million since Biden endorsed her.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who arrives in D.C. today — is landing right in the middle of an unprecedented storm in American politics, Axios' Barak Ravid writes.

• Why it matters: It'll be Netanyahu's first visit to Washington in almost four years, and his first trip abroad since Oct. 7.

Netanyahu wants to use his visit to the White House tomorrow — and his speech to Congress on Wednesday — to rehabilitate both his tarnished image as "the protector of Israel," and his status as the Israeli politician with the most power and influence in the U.S.

• Now out of the race, President Biden can focus on his legacy in the next six months — and likely seek to end the war in Gaza while he's in office.
• Netanyahu will also meet with Vice President Harris.

The other side: Netanyahu also hopes to meet with Trump. The Israeli prime minister has been courting the former president, who has held a grudge against him for years.

• Keep reading.

A core group of six Democrats has been floated as possible running mates for Vice President Harris if she secures the nomination, Axios' Erin Doherty writes.

• Go deeper: What to know about six big contenders.

MAGA Inc., the main super PAC backing former President Trump, will roll out a new series of digital spots inspired by YouTube TV's "enjoy the Zen" ad breaks.

• Why it matters: The ads — which will run in swing states until Election Day — target counties and metro areas that Trump lost ground in between 2016 and 2020.

Alex Pfeiffer, communications director for MAGA Inc., tells Axios the Democratic Party "is unraveling, chaos is consuming our nation, and war continues to ravage the globe. It doesn't have to be like this."

🎞️ Zoom in: In one spot, a Border Patrol vehicle drives slowly next to a segment of border wall.

• In another, a U.S. Navy destroyer is shown with the tagline: "A return to peace through strength. Vote Trump."

• The backstory.