As I read through Kamala Harris’ new memoir, ‘107 Days,’ several things stood out to me – for all the wrong reasons.
Harris calls letting Biden decide 2024 run ‘recklessness’ in new book
Kamala Harris says in her new memoir that it was a mistake to leave the decision up to former President Joe Biden on whether to run in 2024.
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Former Vice President Kamala Harris’ new memoir on her sprint to the 2024 presidential election is revealing the behind-the-scenes conversations that the nation wasn’t privy to – and part of me wonders if some of it should have stayed that way.
In “107 Days,” released Sept. 23, Harris details what she was thinking and the conversations that were happening when then-President Joe Biden stepped away from the Democratic nomination, and what her life looked like as she prepared to take on Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
No spoilers here, but I’m sure you know how it ends.
As I read through the book, several things stood out to me – for all the wrong reasons. Harris’ memoir, and her subsequent book tour, make it clear that she was too concerned about keeping up the status quo and tiptoeing around Biden’s “legacy” to actually stake her claim in the Democratic Party.
I was someone who wanted to see Harris move the Democrats forward. Instead, it seems that she had to conform to the party as it existed under Biden.
While I’m not sure the election would have gone any other way, the party certainly could have been better prepared to meet the moment that just overwhelmed the Democratic leadership. This book shows us why that happened.
Harris is finally honest about Biden
One thing is clear in the book: Harris and Biden were not a perfect match going into 2024. The book often reflects on how Harris had reservations about Biden’s age and mental acuity well before he removed himself from the race, and how he cast a long shadow over the rest of the campaign. She oscillates between complimenting Biden and coming off (understandably) resentful toward the former president and his team.
One of the most illuminating quotes about their relationship isn’t from Harris but from her husband, Doug Emhoff, when Biden was still saying he’d stay in the race. You get the sense that the second gentleman is voicing the feelings that the vice president is unable to plainly state.
“They hide you away for four years, give you impossible, (expletive) jobs, don’t correct the record when those tasks are mischaracterized, never fight back when you’re attacked, never praise your accomplishments, and now, finally, they want you out there on that balcony, standing right beside them,” Emhoff says. “Now, finally, they know you are an asset, and they need you to reassure the American people.”
This quote is just one of the instances where you see behind the political public relations machine and into the actual feelings behind the Democrats’ drawn-out delay to remove Biden from the reelection ballot. Yet for some reason, Harris was unable to stake her own claim in the presidential race. In an infamous interview on “The View,” she couldn’t name a way that she would be different from Biden, something that was detrimental to her campaign and showed a glaring leadership problem.
Harris was overwhelmed by the conversation about Gaza
Harris also details that she and Biden were not on the same page on Gaza. In the book, Biden is a self-described “Zionist” while Harris describes the issue as more complicated. Yet she acknowledges that even if Biden were loyal to Israel, it wouldn’t change the fact that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted Trump in the White House. This was yet another issue where the two Democratic leaders were at odds.
“The war in Gaza is not a binary issue, but too often the conversation about it is,” Harris writes. “I wanted to acknowledge the complexity, nuance and history of the region, but it seemed very few people had the appetite for that or the willingness to hold two tragic narratives in their mind at the same time, to grieve for human suffering both Israeli and Palestinian.”
I disagree with Harris’ assessment of how much voters cared about the nuance of the Israel-Hamas war. I think it mattered a great deal, something Trump proved when he said that he would end the war in Gaza. Even though it was clear he was lying, this was enough to sway voters who were tired of hearing Democrats provide non-answers about the conflict.
Harris admits that the pro-Palestinian protests at her rallies “got to (her).” Even now, as activists protest at her book tour, it seems that she hasn’t been able to strike the right tone: While she no longer has power in the U.S. government, she does have the power to move the Democratic Party closer to public opinion on the conflict. Too bad she simply lacks the leadership ability to stand firm on anything.
Harris’ Pete Buttigieg comments say more about her than us
One of the elements that shocked me the most was Harris’ comments on former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who was apparently her first choice for a running mate.
“He would have been an ideal partner – if I were a straight white man,” Harris writes. “But we were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man. Part of me wanted to say, ‘Screw it, let’s just do it.’ But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk.”
I’m surprised that Harris is so willing to say the quiet part out loud – and apparently others are as well. Buttigieg told Politico that he was surprised by the passage and thought the former vice president wasn’t giving Americans enough credit. Some on the right also thought this was a bad take: Trump’s Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, who is also gay, trashed Harris for caring too much about “identity politics” and not putting trust in the American people.
As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I’m a little dismayed that someone’s sexuality would be such a deciding factor in a presidential ticket. But I’m also a realist – I know that there are still plenty of people for whom this would be asking too much.
The issue is that Democrats still seem to be pandering to the mythical moderate swing voter instead of playing to their base – a base that would likely have gotten on board with Buttigieg if the party itself were confident in choosing him. Here, Harris showed a lack of vision and commitment to her beliefs for some fake notion of a voter base.
Democrats keep proving their lack of spine
While Harris promises to reveal new truths about the 2024 election and the inner workings of the Democratic Party at the time, it also seems she hasn’t been able to pinpoint what exactly the Democrats’ problem has been over the past decade.
In an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Sept. 23, Harris would not definitively say that older members of the Democratic Party need to step aside and let younger politicians step up to the plate – something that is at odds with what the party needs to survive. She also expressed surprise that institutions – namely corporations – were so quick to bend the knee for Trump. This shouldn’t have been a surprise – of course the titans of industry are going to side with the winning team, no matter what is best for “democracy.”
The response to “107 Days” is also telling. It seems Democrats would still rather duke it out with one another than do some introspection on their dismal poll numbers in spite of the havoc Trump is wreaking on the country. Instead of working together to move the party forward, leadership and strategists are still trying to dissect what exactly went wrong.
I’m disappointed that Harris waited until she was trying to sell a book to break with Biden on issues that clearly impacted voter turnout in the 2024 election.
It was an opportunity for the Democratic Party to realign with the American working class, to focus on the fact that Trump’s policy proposals (or lack thereof) were going to affect their wallets.
Harris could have been the candidate who showed the future of the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, she was still stuck in Biden’s version, and she still lacks the strength to push the party forward.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Sara Pequeño on X, formerly Twitter: @sara__pequeno
