The national party bosses quietly consulted their rule books. State party chairs met in secret. Others operated without orders to prepare the ground. Donna Brazile, the former Democratic Party chair, and Bakari Sellers, the former South Carolina lawmaker, started running their own delegate whip operation weeks before Biden bowed out. There was no public list of the 4,000 or so first-ballot convention voters — the risk of it leaking, causing harassment and death threats, hung in the air. But Brazile and Sellers knew the local politicians, the union leaders and the state party chairs who ran most delegations.

They also knew the rules. It didn’t matter how many donors or members of Congress called for Biden to step aside, or how many scripts the playwright Aaron Sorkin published on op-ed pages. Pledged delegates would decide, and they could betray Biden. According to Rule 13 (J), they had the power to vote on the first ballot “in all good conscience.” So Brazile and Sellers made sure everyone held firm, reporting back to the campaign’s whip operation and White House senior counselor Steve Ricchetti that the troops remained in formation.

“I had people call me and say, ‘Is the vice president ready?’ I said, ‘No, she wants Joe Biden. She is sticking with Joe Biden,’” Brazile remembered. But when it came up, Brazile also told people that the party already had a backup quarterback on the roster. Sellers told others Harris could not be skipped. There was no question in those calls what would happen if Biden made a different choice. “I said, ‘Oh hell no, you are not taking Vice President Harris out. That is not going to happen,’” Brazile said.