“In retrospect,” Kamala Harris writes of letting Joe and Jill Biden decide on their own whether the then-president should have tried to run for re-election, “I think it was recklessness.”
That is the assessment that the former vice president makes in her forthcoming memoir of her abbreviated 2024 run, in a significant break from the dutiful stance she took toward her old boss throughout their time in office and since.
“‘It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized,” Harris writes in the first excerpt of “107 Days” published Wednesday morning by The Atlantic. “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.”
Part of the problem, Harris writes, was a Biden team so committed to not helping her that she says it ultimately came at his own, and the country’s expense.
“When polls indicated that I was getting more popular, the people around him didn’t like the contrast that was emerging,” Harris writes. “None of them grasped that if I did well, he did well. That given the concerns about his age, my visible success as his vice president was vital. It would serve as a testament to his judgment in choosing me and reassurance that if something happened, the country was in good hands. My success was important for him.”
“His team,” Harris ends the chapter by writing, “didn’t get it.”
by Financial-Painter689
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Harris notes in the chapter that she is a loyal person. That loyalty to the point of timidity about taking on Biden and his record became an anchor to her presidential campaign, most devastatingly during an appearance on “The View” last October when she was asked, “What, if anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?”
Despite preparation and prodding from top aides to make a break, she said, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”
“On his worst day, he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best. But at 81, Joe got tired,” Harris writes. “That’s when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles. 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. I don’t believe it was incapacity. If I believed that, I would have said so. As loyal as I am to President Biden, I am more loyal to my country.”
Harris announced over the summer she would not, as many expected, run for governor of California next year but has left the door open to another presidential run, though multiple people close to her have told CNN they expect her time running for office may be done.
In the meantime, her book, set to be released in two weeks, is another development in an interconnected but sometimes troubled relationship between her and Biden, which stretches back to her friendship with Biden’s beloved late son Beau through the moment in the first primary debate in June 2019 when she attacked Biden as wrong for his 1970s position on school busing and then through the ups and downs of serving together in the White House.
Harris writes about being undercut by Biden and his staff, accusing them of neither defending nor highlighting her and even “adding fuel to negative narratives that sprang up around me.”
Her assignment from Biden to be the point person for migration issues stemming from Central America, Harris writes, was a perfect example.
“When Republicans mischaracterized my role as ‘border czar,’ no one in the White House comms team helped me to effectively push back and explain what I had really been tasked to do, nor to highlight any of the progress I had achieved,” adding several paragraphs later, “Instead, I shouldered the blame for the porous border, an issue that had proved intractable for Democratic and Republican administrations alike.”
A spokesperson for Biden did not have an immediate comment.
The chapter in the excerpt is written about July 24, 2024, a few days after Harris took over as the nominee following nearly a month of Democratic trauma and when Biden finally delivered an Oval Office address to discuss his exit.
I really don’t want to hear excuses from the person who is partially responsible for the fascist takeover of my country
So basically, Harris’s monumental failure is actually about how good a person she is. Shocking.
Not really interested in finger-pointing and what-ifs from any of these folks right now like I just don’t really care what they have to say. We’ve got way bigger fish to fry, partially thanks to them
If the Democrat party establishment isn’t calling for outright upheaval and resistance, I don’t want to hear it. 4 years and they did nothing to protect us from what we have now. Unbelievable that they STILL think that being business as usual will change anything. They sleep walked into disaster, woke up, and said “we have to be reasonable.” Fuck that.
Bold move of her to proclaim that her loyalty to Biden over her country as somehow being better
I am so sick of her and liberals, man
She needs to just go away. We don’t need to hear more lies from the Democratic party. Everyone knows they tried to backdoor their ultimate DEI candidate into the White House & it failed miserably.
We all remember her & Corey Booker snickering at a mumbling Biden during their 2020 primary debate, right? The entire world saw it & they act like we didn’t.
Kamala does more harm than good at this point.
https://youtu.be/USZmCBOQnsE?si=eBHgYRRMH2WuADxi
i really couldn’t care less after she tacitly endorsed a genocide for over a year, she and biden can both rot <3 the narrative that insanely powerful & wealthy politicians actually have no agency is so insulting
I’d say it was reckless to enable and outright support a genocide in Palestine tbh but each to their own I guess
I mean all this does is confirm something I feel like I and others have been saying for months which is that Biden and the mainstream vanguard of high ranking democrats simply did not care about winning. They were more concerned about winning “their way” and if that means risking catastrophic loss then so be it, anything for them to not move to the left.
Something tells me they’re not talking anymore 😂
If that’s the case, why didn’t your team tell him to step aside and let you run your own campaign? Plus, the only reason you had a rise in support was because people said you had a better view on the genocide and wanted it to end. But the moment you went out there, you said “I’m speaking” shut out Palestinian voices, had Biden chastised Muslim voters and paraded Liz Cheney, of all people, around.
It’s easy to blame genocide loving Biden, but Harris also stood up and cheered when Trump spoke about supporting Israel during his first presidential speech.
Kamala Harris didn’t have a plan to run and yes, Biden caused a lot of problems, but if she wanted to do something to fight against Trump she would have. She had the power to do so and chose not to.
It totally has nothing to do with her breaking from 80% of her base on foreign policy, backtracking on healthcare, immigration, and civil rights, and taking billionaire money while standing for nothing.
All that matters is we are in deep shit now. We can be mad at Harris, madder at Joe, more mad at the people who chose psychotic cruelty – but looking back with regret on their inaction won’t help a damn bit.
Why come out with this a year after the fact. I don’t care if you have regrets Ms. Harris you failed monumentally and ordinary people have to deal with the massive consequences! Congrats on the book deal I guess
I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe the BS that Joe Biden is compassionate. Sure he’s more compassionate than Donald Trump but just about anybody else on planet earth is. I remember Joe Biden as the person who surprised Reagan with how genocidal he was re: Israel. Biden is the one who was always supporting arming cops and shielding them from wrongdoing for decades. The reason he was chosen as Obama’s running mate in the first place was because he would appeal to more conservative Democrats and moderates. He was a terrible choice as a presidential nominee the first time and he was an even worse choice the second time.
its clear by now that Kamala’s support of genocide is what lost her the election. Yes there were a bunch of different factors that also were not good for her odds but if she didn’t support genocide, there would have been a pretty good chance
Sincerely we don’t give a fuck about these self serving post mortems. What is your plan to take back congress in 2026 and White House in 2028. Put up, or STFU.
Frankly, totally disregarding any of her actual ideas or policies, which I also generally hate, if you can’t step up and make this point publicly WHEN IT MATTERED and choose instead to just go along to get along then point fingers to deflect blame off yourself after it’s all said and done, you simply do not have the mental fortitude required of a leader in these particular times.
she won’t address AIPAC, her emotional support Republican Liz Cheney and why they constantly ask for money despite giving away our rights.
No shit.
So brave to say that now
No fucking shit.
“I’m loyal to Joe and here’s my book trashing him”
“my popularity was increasing”
No it wasn’t! Everyone was telling everyone with months to go that you can’t run a genocide cop to win! The delusions with these people
I bet there is a whole lot more from where that came from.
Throughout 2021-2024, the Biden team worked to make her invisible and lacking accomplishments, only giving her one major task, and the most unpopular and impossible one: The Border.
The Biden team constantly leaked unflattering stuff about her.
Most likely they predicted there would be a conversation about Harris replacing Biden in 2024 and sought to make her as least appealing as possible.
Of course there’s a book because anything worth a damn in the US has to be made to sell.
What a joke.
I just hate the book selling culture of politics. They know they need some ‘dirt’ to hit the zeitgeist. The books are half purchased for events by ‘donors’. The books are nothing more than slush funds to get $$$s to people in politics on both sides.