In a searing and unprecedented act of public candor, former Vice President Kamala Harris has called former President Joe Biden’s decision to seek re-election “recklessness” in her new memoir, a blistering critique that shatters the facade of unity within the Democratic Party and offers a scathing insider’s account of the administration’s final months.
In excerpts from the book, 107 Days, published by The Atlantic, Harris directly addresses the most persistent question of the 2024 campaign: why the party’s leaders allowed an 81-year-old president to run for a second term despite mounting public and private concerns.
“Was it grace, or was it recklessness?” Harris writes of the decision, which she says was left to Biden and his wife, Jill. “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.”
The revelations are the most unsparing yet from a former member of the Biden administration and go far beyond a simple political post-mortem. Harris claims she was in an impossible position to offer advice, fearing her counsel would be seen as “naked ambition” and “poisonous disloyalty.” She portrays a White House that was almost hypnotized by a mantra that the decision was “Joe and Jill’s alone,” a collective silence that ultimately led to the Democratic Party’s most devastating loss in a generation.
The memoir, set to be released on September 23, also paints a picture of a strained relationship between the vice president and her boss’s team. Harris writes that she felt sidelined and under-defended by the White House communications staff, who she accuses of rarely pushing back against Republican attacks and treating her successes as a threat. “Their thinking was zero-sum: If she’s shining, he’s dimmed,” Harris writes, adding that the team failed to grasp that her visibility was vital given concerns about Biden’s age.
While Harris is careful to defend Biden’s mental capacity, she acknowledges that “at 81, Joe got tired,” and that his age “showed in physical and verbal stumbles.” She claims she was more loyal to her country than to any one man.
For a Democratic Party still reeling from the 2024 defeat, the publication of 107 Days is a fresh wound. The memoir not only confirms what many suspected about the internal dynamics of the Biden White House but also thrusts Harris back into the political spotlight with a book tour planned across 15 cities. It is a calculated move that some may see as a bid to cement her position as a leader for 2028, but it is also an undeniable public reckoning with a decision she believes cost her and her party the presidency.