Democrats had been secretly planning for former President Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race or even ‘die in office’ as far back as 2023, a damning new book claims.

Top party officials, led by former Vice President Kamala Harris’ communications director Jamal Simmons, drew up contingency plans for a slew of possibilities leading up to the 2024 election. 

One scenario included that ‘Biden might die in office,’ according to Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes’ upcoming book Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House. 

‘They wanted to make sure the party was ready for every possible circumstance if Biden launched his campaign and then stepped aside before the primaries; if he had won a bunch of primaries and then could not continue,’ the book reads, according to The Guardian.

‘If he secured enough delegates for winning the nomination, but dropped out before winning a floor vote at the convention and if he left a vacancy at the top of the ticket after taking the nomination.’

The ‘hush-hush’ meetings focused on what the party rules said would happen in any of these circumstances ‘and how [those rules] might need to be changed, if the president no longer had the desire, or the ability to run.’

Among the plans they drew up was a ‘death-pool roster’ of judges who could swear Harris into office if the then 81-year-old president passed away, the book claims, citing two unidentified sources.

Simmons ‘never told the Vice President about the death-pool roster before leaving her camp in January 2023, but he advised colleagues that he should be notified immediately if something happened to Biden, because he had worked out an entire communications strategy,’ the book says.

He then left the spreadsheet with another Harris aide.

‘One official involved in secret talks put a fine point on the fear that Biden would not make it to election day as the party’s nominee: “It shows what we had to do to prepare with the unique circumstances we had, which was an 80-plus-year-old who was running,”‘ Allen and Parnes wrote.

Democrats had been secretly planning for former President Joe Biden to either drop out of the presidential race or even ‘die in office’ as far back as 2023, a damning new book claims

It claims that senior officials for then-Vice President Kamala Harris drew up a series of contingency plans for the 81-year-old president

Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes made the claims in their upcoming book, Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House

Still, Biden remained determined to secure a second term, bolstered by his wife, former First Lady Jill Biden – even as he made a series of public stumbles and gaffes. 

But when Biden went face-to-face with then-Republican Nominee Donald Trump in a debate over the summer, the president’s declining mental acuity became undeniable.

Afterward, former President Barack Obama and other leaders, including former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, stepped up to try to convince Biden to step down.

At the same time, they began to see Harris as the only alternative. 

‘One veteran operative summed up the sentiments of Democrats who worried they would get stuck with Harris but still wanted Biden out: “Well at least she has a pulse,”‘ Allen and Parnes write in their book, which will go on sale next week.

Finally, on July 21, Biden announced that he would no longer seek re-election – and endorsed Harris to succeed him as the party’s nominee.

Yet he still demanded complete loyalty from his vice president, according to the book.

When Biden went face-to-face with then-Republican Nominee Donald Trump in a debate over the summer, the president’s declining mental acuity became undeniable

It says that on the day of Harris’ first debate with Trump, Biden called the vice president for a pep talk.  

However, it turned out to be more instructions to protect Biden’s legacy, with a three-word warning.

‘No daylight, kid,’ Biden reportedly said to the then 59-year-old Harris. 

The former president would regularly use that phrase to tie John McCain to George W. Bush ahead of the 2008 election when he ran with Obama. 

In the end, Allen and Parnes suggested whether Harris won or lost in her race against Trump ‘she would only harm him by publicly distancing herself from him’ as Biden staffers remained with her campaign.

At one point, the authors claim, Sean Clegg – a Harris advisor who was not trusted by the Biden staffers – was helping the vice president prepare for a joint appearance with her running mate Tim Walz, when she started listing things that she and Biden accomplished.

Clegg quickly stopped her, according to the book. 

‘Wait, wait, wait! Let’s not do this. Let’s not go down memory lane,’ Clegg said, according to an excerpt previously published by The Hill.

For the remark, Clegg was reportedly disinvited from future media prep sessions by longtime Dem communications staffer Stephanie Cutter. 

Even after dropping out, the book claims, Biden demanded loyalty from his vice president

Harris aides have also claimed that the Biden team was deliberately not working with them as a result of the president being forced to drop out.

Previously, Biden was blamed by senior Harris advisor David Plouffe for her loss because he refused to drop out of the race sooner.

He had claimed no Democratic candidate could have won without a proper primary process—what he called ‘the cardinal sin’ of this race.

And he said he was shocked by the internal polling numbers when he finally joined the team after Biden dropped out with less than four months to go, a situation he described as ‘catastrophic.’

‘When I got in, it was the first time I saw the actual numbers under the hood. They were pretty gruesome,’ he told The Atlantic. 

In the end, Harris and Walz lost every single swing state to Trump, leading to an electoral college blowout.

It marked the first Democrat ticket to lose the popular vote since 2004 and just the second since 1988.