When Joe Biden caught COVID last week it seemed like a cruel joke.
His rival was riding high at the Republican convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Donald Trump had quite literally dodged a bullet. Well, almost.
The bandage on his right ear was a constant reminder of how narrowly the former president had escaped death.
We’d later hear from Trump’s former doctor that the bullet came within a quarter of an inch of his head.
That’s about 6 millimetres.
Joe Biden, meanwhile, just couldn’t catch a break.
His disastrous debate performance was deeply disappointing to his backers.
To millions of Americans who tuned in that night, it was shocking.
For those who’ve been paying attention Joe Biden’s verbal stumbles and jumbled thoughts are part and parcel of his public appearances.
In that sense there was some truth in the excuse he stubbornly held onto for so long that it was just “a bad night”.
When all is said and done, Biden’s inner circle will have to ask themselves whether they too readily accepted that the president increasingly wasn’t quite making sense and chose to shrug it off as just Joe being Joe.
How the debate upended the race
It was, of course, more than a bad night. It was a terrible night, which has changed the course of history.
For weeks, the 81-year-old held on, offering a series of excuses for his performance: He had a cold, he was tired, he was jet-lagged, he didn’t prepare properly, his staff over-scheduled him.
All this, as some of the most senior party leaders began to signal that they no longer had his back.
The former house speaker, party elder Nancy Pelosi, went on MSNBC to suggest the decision about whether to stand aside was Biden’s to make, pointedly opening the door to him leaving after he had firmly closed it.
Leaks emerged from the inner circles of Pelosi and former president Barack Obama that they had serious doubts he could win and the number of congressional Democrats openly calling on Joe Biden to stand aside started to snowball.
The sight of the president gingerly making his way up the stairs of Air Force One after pulling out of campaign events in Nevada when he tested positive for COVID-19 only deepened concerns.
Perhaps if he didn’t fall ill, Biden would still not have pulled out of the race when he did.
The split screen of a sick Joe Biden taken out of public view because of COVID while his rival strutted on stage at the Republican convention to chants of “fight, fight, fight” felt like the nail in Joe Biden’s political coffin.
He retreated to his home at his beloved Rehoboth Beach in Delaware, reportedly stewing and still insisting he was in it to win.
But then it all changed and when the news came, it was shocking and surprising and yet neither of those things.
Perhaps he’ll take the time to write another memoir next year, detailing the backstory of this seismic moment and when exactly and how the fateful decision was made.
Some will argue Biden waited too long to make the call, until he was literally forced into isolation by a virus that had defined the 2020 campaign and the start of his presidency.
And yet there is an argument that he timed it just right.
How the last few weeks help Harris
In the weeks since the debate, there’s been a slow but noticeable change in Democrats’ messaging about Kamala Harris as some senior members of the party have appeared to coalesce around the idea that she might be their best chance when and if Biden dropped out.
There are many arguments in favour of Harris leading the Democratic ticket.
She is already essentially in training for the job, it’s simpler for her to take over the campaign coffers, it avoids a messy open convention where the story is of party disunity, and it means that the Democrats are not accused of tokenism, in appointing a woman of colour as vice-president only to sideline her when she had a shot at the top job.
There are signs that Kamala Harris’s poll numbers are improving in the weeks since the debate.
Senators Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar have thrown their weight behind Harris, so too the powerful African American congressman Jim Clyburn of South Carolina.
The Clintons are also all in for Harris, according to a statement the couple released soon after Joe Biden’s announcement.
And yet Obama has not endorsed Harris.
In a statement, the former president spoke instead of “a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges”.
At this stage, Pelosi has also not thrown her considerable weight behind Harris.
Unless they change their tune quickly, the inference here may be that they prefer an open convention next month, where Harris vies for the support of delegates alongside anyone else who puts their hand up.
Notably, possible contender Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer released a statement reacting to Biden’s decision, but did not endorse Harris.
The vice-president herself has indicated she doesn’t expect to be simply handed the keys.
“My intention is to earn and win this nomination,” she said in a statement.
The next days will determine whether other candidates put their names forward.
But Harris, more than three weeks on from the disastrous debate, is in a much stronger position than she was in late June.
A brutal few weeks
Joe Biden prides himself on being human, as understanding the concerns and ups and downs of ordinary Americans.
Watching him do so badly in the debate and then not appear to realise the gravity of the moment was, for many people, painful.
It reminded us of watching elderly relatives in decline.
Whatever your politics, there was something truly heart-wrenching about the indignity of it all.
In dragging it out, Biden may have given his vice-president the best possible chance of being the Democratic nominee and taking on Trump.
If she succeeds, he will have finally come good on a promise he made in 2020: to be a transitional president.
That could be his greatest legacy.
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Sarah Wilson is your guide to the latest trends, viral sensations, and internet phenomena. With a finger on the pulse of digital culture, she explores what’s trending across social media and pop culture, keeping readers in the know about the latest online sensations.
