The New York Times this morning published a lengthy article exploring how Joe Biden made his pivotal decision to end his re-election campaign.

The president withdrew his bid for a second term after performing poorly in his debate with Donald Trump, which caused his poll numbers to slump significantly and a steady stream of Democratic lawmakers to publicly call for him to bow out. It has also been reported that influential party kingmakers like the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi worked quietly behind closed doors to encourage Biden to exit the race.

The Times reports that Biden met with his top advisers over a weekend in late July, as he recovered from Covid-19 at his house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. With his cat, Willow, in attendance, the advisers told the president that he could still win, but it would require embarking on a campaign in which he would be at odds with much of the Democratic party, the Times reports:

Those inside the small circle of family members and advisers who were with the president at the very end insist that the story of how Mr Biden went from defiance to acquiescence was not about convincing him that he was destined to lose. That never happened, according to people close enough to Mr Biden to know his thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the president’s decision-making in the final hours.

Instead, it was concerns about the impacts of his campaign on vulnerable House and Senate Democrats that ultimately swayed him to drop out, and perhaps the belief that staying in the race would clash with his stated political philosophy:

The depth of the fractures in his party seem to have come into focus for Mr Biden that weekend, as he would explain in the days that followed.

“Well, look,” Mr Biden told Robert Costa of CBS News in an interview on Sunday. “The polls we had showed that it was a neck-and-neck race, would have been down to the wire. But what happened was a number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was going to hurt them in the races. And I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic.”

“I thought it’d be a real distraction,” he said.

But that is only part of the story.

For as long as anyone could remember, Mr Biden had ended speeches with the same optimistic line about the country he had served for so long: “There is nothing America can’t do – when we do it together.”

It was the essence of his political identity.

In the Oval Office remarks that the president delivered a few days after he dropped out, he hinted at the argument that had been persuasive to him, saying he could no longer see a way to run for re-election while staying true to that belief.

It’s on: the vice-presidential candidates JD Vance and Tim Walz are set to debate on the first day of October.

Vance, the Ohio senator who is Donald Trump’s running mate, confirmed this morning that he will attend the debate moderated by CBS News on 1 October:

Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick, Walz, accepted the invitation yesterday:

Vance also mentioned he would attend a debate proposed by CNN on 18 September. It’s not clear if Walz will participate in that one.

The economy had to be one of the most frustrating issues on Joe Biden’s plate during his presidency. While he loved to talk about the labor market’s recovery from the mass layoffs caused by Covid-19 and the better-than-expected economic growth, polls showed that Americans were far more concerned by inflation, which during his presidency hit levels not seen since the 1980s, and brought his approval ratings down with it.

But Kamala Harris is the Democratic nominee now, and will take a shot at resetting the narrative with voters. The Guardian’s Helen Sullivan reports that the vice-president will detail her economic plan on Friday with a speech in North Carolina, where she’ll announce her support for a federal ban on price gouging – which Biden and other Democrats have repeatedly blamed for the uptick in prices.

Here’s more on that:

Good morning, US politics blog readers. This afternoon, Kamala Harris will hold her first joint rally with Joe Biden since the president ended his bid for a second term and allowed her to take his place at the top of the Democratic ticket. The duo will appear at a community college in Washington DC’s Maryland suburbs, and the event will be focused on their efforts to lower prices after years of politically perilous inflation. You can expect to hear plenty about yesterday’s encouraging inflation data, and this morning’s news that the Biden administration had negotiated discounts of up to 79% for 10 popular medications for people receiving Medicare, thanks to the president’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act signed two years ago.

And don’t be surprised if the president and vice-president lay into Donald Trump as they seek to make the most of the momentum that Harris appears to have since entering the race. Polls continue to show her leading him both nationally and in the handful of swing states expected to determine the result, a turnaround from when Biden was the nominee and struggling to overtake him anywhere. The rally begins at 1.30pm ET, and we’ll be covering it live.

There is plenty more happening today:

• Trump will hold his second press conference in as many weeks today at 4.30pm. More and more Republicans are calling on him to reset his campaign as Harris surges in popularity, but he definitely did not do that in his last encounter with the press.

• JD Vance, the Ohio senator who is Trump’s running mate, speaks in swing state Pennsylvania at 10am. After a speech in Michigan yesterday, he surprised reporters by inviting them to ask him questions in front of the crowd. We’ll see if he plans to make that a habit.

• Speaking of polls, the Cook Political Report shifted its rating for Nevada’s crucial Senate race from “toss-up” to “leans Democrat” in good news for the incumbent Democrat Jacky Rosen.