Kamala Harris is finally opening up about Joe Biden‘s bid for re-election in her new memoir. The book titled 107 Days
features the former Vice President’s unfiltered thoughts about the former President’s decision.
Harris wrote that the Biden administration had undermined her bid for the presidency in the wake of the 2024 election. The former California Attorney General had thought about recommending to Biden that he should not seek reelection, but it put her in a tough position to be his handpicked successor. She called the decision, “incredibly self-serving.” “He would see it as naked ambition, perhaps as poisonous disloyalty, even if my only message was: Don’t let the other guy win,” she said.
“‘It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized,” Harris wrote in an excerpt published by The Atlantic. “Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness. The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision.”
107 Days by Kamala Harris
However, Harris did not see Biden, who was 81 at the time of re-election, as unfit to serve the country. The vice president blamed traveling for his May debate stumble. “At 81, Joe got tired. That’s when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles,” she wrote. “I don’t think it’s any surprise that the debate debacle happened right after two back-to-back trips to Europe and a flight to the West Coast for a Hollywood fundraiser.”
Harris also revealed that Biden’s team didn’t take salacious press stories seriously. “When the stories were unfair or inaccurate, the president’s inner circle seemed fine with it,” she wrote. “Indeed, it seemed as if they decided I should be knocked down a little bit more.” She learned that Biden’s staff was “adding fuel to negative narratives that sprang up” about her.
107 Days chronicles Kamala Harris’ journey as the Democratic presidential candidate following Biden’s dropout all the way up to President Donald Trump’s victory in the November election. The book will be released on Sept. 23.
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