Before President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid, his loyalists held on to one last hope: that he could keep the race close enough that his more traditional ground game could outperform former President Donald Trump’s unconventional one in the Rust Belt, eking out an Electoral College majority and a second term.

Most senior Democrats concluded that it was more likely that Biden would put Virginia, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and perhaps even New Jersey in play than pull off this trifecta no matter how good his get-out-the-vote operations were, so he was replaced with Vice President Kamala Harris.