My Summer Vacation (Not)

The 24 Dark and Harrowing Days Before Biden Dropped Out

Lake Mälaren in July

On July 14th, I sent an email to my subscribers letting them know that I’d be off for a couple of weeks. Summer vacation, I said. Reader, it was a lie. Or at least, it was half a lie. My real summer vacation is next week, when my family and I will take the ferry across the Kattegat Sea to a little village on the Danish coast. We will sit in the garden in the sun with a view of the North Sea, eating smørrebrød and being happy. 

The vacation I mentioned in my message was a different kind. It was one that I needed to take from my own head. The news from the U.S. had been too much of late. Much, much too much. And even though I left the U.S. five years ago and moved to Sweden, some kind of cord still connects me to home. I can’t seem to shake it. So my imaginary vacation didn’t really work.

I sent that message out on the morning of July 14. I’d been up a while. At 1:35 AM Stockholm time, my phone began buzzing and spitting like a demon with texts and alerts. I usually turn it off at bedtime, but that night I hadn’t. It was 6:25 PM in the Northeastern U.S. where, at an outdoor rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, there’d been an attempt on the life of the former president and current Republican nominee (out of respect for his near death, and for a limited time only, I will not refer to the nominee by his customary nickname in these pages). It was very close. An assassin's bullet had grazed the top of his right ear. It had also drawn blood, upended the U.S. election and shaken the country’s idea of itself to its core. 

By 2:00 AM, it was obvious there’d be no more sleep for me that night. I made a pot of coffee. Outside, the sun would soon begin to lighten the sky in the almost endless daylight of the Swedish summer. I felt like I could never sleep again. We had already fallen and now we were falling still lower. Biden’s reelection bid had been in grave doubt since June 27, when he failed painfully at the debate in Atlanta. His defeat would be the nominee’s victory, of course. From the evening he was led off that stage until he announced his decision to bow out from the race, 24 days passed. 

Only 24 days, three weeks and change. But at times, it felt like the end of the world as I have known it. During that time, I could not breathe. I did not want to know what my senses were telling me. I did not want to see what I knew was going to happen. 

In the days after the debate, everyone seemed to be trying to rally. My friends and I tried to make ourselves believe that what we had seen was actually something else. It was a cold. A bad day. Lingering jet lag. We told each other that there was no going back from this point and that he had to step down from the campaign. We said that anything, even a ham sandwich, was better than the alternative. The Biden campaign crafted a strategy to present President Biden in a better light, to show him as a vigorous man. But he kept stumbling.

Campaigns are marathons measured by changes in momentum and narrative. This one was dead in the water because we knew what we had seen. Biden had declined, shockingly. That doesn’t get better. Time had already voted, the fight was beyond his reach now and he, stiff and mumbling, was leading us to a brutal defeat. The nominee was going to take it again, just like 2016. And this time, he was going to burn us into the ground.

“Take it easy,” my husband said. There was something pained in his eyes. He had been more watchful lately.

I tried. I quit reading the news. It’s been lovely here with the late evenings and the flowers in bloom. Summer in Sweden is paradise. This year, there’d been very little rain, one perfect day following the next. The fresh strawberries had peaked around the Midsommar holiday, but now cherries were in season. Soon it would be time for platters of crayfish served with fresh bread, Västerbotten cheese and a shot or two of Aquavit. I went to a magical wedding in a castle in the countryside. I took the dog swimming in Lake Mälaren most mornings. We were out walking a lot. It all helped, but really, I couldn’t shake the dread.

One walk of many in Stockholm.

Then came that shot. His survival was wildly improbable, like a miracle. And that bullet was his apotheosis.

At the Republican convention a few days later, the nominee appeared with what looked like a Maxi Pad affixed to his right ear. You couldn’t miss it from half a mile away and that was the point. The injury signaled to his faithful that he had vanquished death itself. The right was united in lockstep behind him. He was headed toward victory. It didn’t look like anything could stop him.

I recognized the dread. This was how it had felt in the U.S. during his administration. The knot of apprehension in my belly. The tension in my jaw. My hypervigilance with the news. The keening certainty that tomorrow would be worse than today, in ways I didn’t yet understand. This right here was the intolerable feeling that had led me to abandon the country that I loved back then. I couldn’t bear it then and I couldn’t bear it now. I was plunged into the same chaos that I had only recently escaped. It was all happening again.

Something bad was coming, in slow motion. We could see it clearly, but even though time had ground to a standstill, we were frozen, powerless to stop it. Something was shattering into pieces in our hands and we could not hold it together. 

By last Sunday, I was struggling with a black mood. It was a full moon that day and I felt crazy. But I had an afternoon event to attend and I was there, sitting outside with a group of American expats, when the news broke. Biden would step down. People around me immediately picked up their phones, but I didn’t, even though it was probably safe now. I looked at the beautiful lake in front of us, unable to speak for a moment, filled with relief and gratitude, our birthright restored. In the New York Times, Hillary Clinton wrote, “President Biden’s decision to end his campaign was as pure an act of patriotism as I have seen in my lifetime.” I can’t say it better than that. And now, just like that, there is hope.