Former Vice President Kamala Harris revealed in her new memoir that 107 days was not enough time to win a presidential election, while offering a behind-the-scenes look into intimate moments and decisions during her historic presidential campaign.
Harris’s new memoir, released Tuesday, details each day of her sprint to the White House after former President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race and she succeeded to the top of the ticket.
“One hundred and seven days were not, in the end, long enough to accomplish the task of winning the presidency,” Harris writes in 107 Days.
Throughout the memoir, Harris elaborated on her relationship with the Bidens, her mistakes during the campaign, and the reasoning behind important decisions, including selecting her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN).
She also weaves in her policy ideas through personal anecdotes from the campaign trail and her personal life, taking time to explain her ideas for the country that she was not able to successfully craft in her short campaign.
In this book, Harris exposed her vulnerability by sharing stories about how the campaign affected her family, the emotions behind certifying her election results, and recounting her internal thoughts throughout the campaign.
The Washington Examiner obtained a copy of Harris’s book, 107 Days, before its Sept. 23 release.
Biden wanted to wait to endorse Harris after he dropped out
The book opens with the day Biden called Harris to tell her he was dropping out of the race, after Biden faced calls from donors and those within his party to drop out following a disastrous debate with President Donald Trump.
Harris reveals that when Biden called her, she had just minutes to process the news before he announced his decision to the world. She said Biden’s original plan was to wait a few days before endorsing her.
Harris convinced Biden and his close aides to immediately endorse her, arguing that it would be “ruinous” due to the 24-hour news cycle. She also noted that questions would circulate as to why he didn’t endorse her, creating the chaos the campaign had suffered for weeks since the CNN debate.
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“The public statements, the whispering campaigns, and the speculation had done a world of damage. I knew I was the candidate in the strongest position to win. The most qualified and ready. The highest name recognition. A powerful donor base,” Harris said.
“And I also knew, as he did, that I was the only person who would preserve his legacy. At this point, anyone else was bound to throw him – as all the good he had achieved – right under the bus,” she said.
Harris refused to entertain conversations about her running and Biden dropping out because she didn’t want rumors of a divide, but Biden’s senior staff didn’t share her opinion. In quelling “the rebellion,” she said they talked Harris down privately during one-on-one calls with others.
Throughout the administration, Biden’s senior staff thought that when Harris was “shining, he dimmed.”
Harris also said Biden had not mentioned dropping out until July 15, after a meeting in the situation room about Trump’s assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. Biden asked Harris if he were to drop out, he would support her, but only if she wanted it. Harris said she’s “fully behind” him but would be ready.
Following the announcement, Harris immediately began calling big names in the Democratic Party and getting a range of responses, including:
Rep. Nancy Pelosi thought there should be “some kind of primary, not an anointment.” Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered immediate support. Former President Barack Obama told Harris he would be supportive, but he wasn’t going to “put a finger on the scale” so Biden could have his moment. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VM) asked Harris to prioritize the working class, not just abortion.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) said he was hiking and would call back — Harris noted he never did.
The book covers the next 106 days until the election, when Trump won the electoral and popular vote, a day so traumatic for her and her husband Douglas Emhoff that they didn’t speak about it again until she wrote the book, she said.
Harris said Biden’s decision to run again was reckless
Harris struggles in the book to present a forceful case for why she and others did not step in when it became clear the presidency was taking a toll on Biden, physically and mentally. Harris writes that there was no conspiracy to cover up a cognitive decline, and if there had been, she wrote, she would have publicly said so.
In the book, Harris admits it was a mistake not to dissuade Biden from running again, joining other Democrats who have since admitted the same.
Harris wrote that it became a “mantra” within the White House that the decision to run remained solely on the president and his wife, first lady Jill Biden.
“In retrospect, I think it was recklessness,” she said about Biden’s decision. “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.”
In another section of the book, Harris reflects that the Bidens didn’t seek Harris’s help until it was really needed: after the debate.
At the July 4, 2024, celebration, the first lady pulled Emhoff aside and questioned if the second couple were loyal to the Bidens. Harris felt Jill Biden never forgave her for going at Biden hard during the 2019 primary debate.
“They hide you away for four years, give you impossible jobs, don’t correct the record when those tasks are mischaracterized, never fight back when you’re attacked,” Emhoff told Harris at the time. “Now, finally, they know you’re an asset, and they need you to reassure the American people. And still, they have to ask if you’re loyal?”
Loyalty to Biden, even when he got in the way of her campaign
Throughout the campaign, Harris struggled to separate herself from Biden due to her loyalty to him.
She wrote that Biden didn’t want to get out of the race or stop being president, so Harris was “determined” to at least let him have his dignity. She would continue to praise him throughout the campaign until her strategist urged her to stop.
“It’s time this campaign was about you,” David Plouffe told her, she recalls. “People hate Joe Biden.”
Harris admits she realized this fact too late, writing, “It would take time, too much time, before I acknowledged the truth.” Harris said she refused to dump on Biden because of all the good they did together in their administration, and because Trump was already doing this.
“I faced an opponent who majored in malice, and I was damned if I was going to join the chorus of cruelty,” she said.
Harris’s loyalty would be tested throughout her campaign, resurfacing in a damaging way during her appearance on The View.
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Sunny Hostin asked Harris, “If anything, would you have done something differently than President [Joe] Biden during the past four years?”
Harris had prepared for this question, planning to say she was not Joe Biden or Donald Trump and explain how she would have a Republican in her Cabinet. Instead, she said nothing came to mind and described the administration’s success.
“I had no idea I’d just pulled the pin on a hand grenade. I wasn’t braced for the explosion that was coming,” she wrote about the incident.
Harris said naming specific policy areas in answering this question would’ve opened a discussion that is “backward-looking rather than forward.” She felt the question wanted her to be critical of Biden, and she saw no way of answering that question without “embracing the cruelty of her opponent.”
Over the campaign, Harris said she became increasingly aware that people wanted to know there was a separation between her and Biden. She knew it was a big issue, but admits she didn’t realize how big. Campaign strategists, including David Plouffe, felt that someone needed to do an “intervention” and that it was a “real issue.”
“My feelings for him were grounded in warmth and loyalty, but they had become complicated, over time, with hurt and disappointment,” Harris wrote in another section about her relationship with Biden.
Harris said she felt she “owed him” her loyalty, even after the White House and Biden’s lack of support hindered her campaign.
There are several scenes in the book where Biden hurt Harris when she needed him the most.
During a visit to the Shanksville Volunteer Fire Department, she watched Biden put on a MAGA hat. In another instance, Biden called her before her debate to relay that his brother said “power brokers” in Philadelphia threatened not to support her since she bad-mouthed Biden.
She writes that in each instance, her campaign had to “clean” the errors.
Vice president decision
When it came time to decide on her running mate, Harris was encouraged to, and sought to, choose someone different from her.
The search was narrowed down from eight candidates to three finalists: Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), and Tim Walz (D-MN).
But Harris’s first choice was then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. She wanted to pick him, but felt she couldn’t pick a gay man because she was a “Black woman married to a Jewish man.” She thought it was “too big of a risk.”
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Harris walks through her thought process for selecting her vice presidential candidate.
She viewed Kelly as an “American ideal of selfless service” and worried about how he would handle a modern political campaign. She wrote she “couldn’t afford to test Mark Kelly in that ugly grinder.”
Harris was apprehensive about picking Kelly because John Kerry’s military reputation was “unfairly damaged” during his presidential run, and the guy who led the effort, Chris LaCivita, was one of Trump’s campaign aides.
Harris felt Shapiro was more concerned with defining his role in the administration than helping her win. She recounted Shapiro saying he wanted to be present for every decision she made and asking an aide about art he could use in the vice president’s residence.
While a majority of her staff wanted Walz, Harris’s husband wanted Shapiro because they knew him better.
Ultimately, she selected Walz because she liked his charm and felt he offered a different background than hers. Harris details moments throughout the book where she struggles to balance her admiration for him with Walz’s campaign errors.
For example, Walz’s debate against then-Sen. JD Vance, who Harris called a “shape-shifter.” Harris recalls her frustration in watching the debate as she felt Walz fell for Vance’s “bipartisanship.”
Harris’s future and perspective on country’s current state
Throughout the book, Harris concedes that 107 days was not enough time to win a presidential election. She admits she didn’t have enough time to craft a message that reached Gen Z and Latino voters, dispel Trump’s lies, and explain her policies in a way voters could understand, especially her economic policies.
The phrase, “I didn’t have enough time,” appears multiple times throughout the book, after Harris recounts a personal anecdote and policy explanation.
When she called Trump to concede, Trump told Harris she was a “tough, smart customer, and I say that with great respect.” Trump also said she has a beautiful name, noting that Trump said her name correctly.
Despite the Harris camp’s understanding on election night that they had lost the election, they decided to push her concession speech to the next day. Harris recalls her team being prepared for every scenario on election night except her defeat.
Harris reveals that on the way to deliver her concession speech, she removed parts about Trump rolling back “our rights and freedoms,” because she’d “prosecuted the case” and the election was over.
However, she uses the book’s afterword to highlight that she was right about everything she said Trump would do when in office, wishing she had “no cause” to say, “I told you so.”
Harris argues Trump didn’t have the mandate to enact his policies because his win was “whisker-thin.” She said one-third of voters stayed home, while a third voted for her and another third for Trump.
Harris said she predicted Trump’s actions but not the “capitulation.” She highlights the billionaires “lining up to grovel,” the media companies, universities, and many major law firms.
Throughout the book, Harris alluded to this future when she discussed newspaper editorial boards refusing to publish their endorsements of her, Fox News’s Bret Baier acting as a “propagandist” in her interview, and Elon Musk buying the presidency.
“Democracy is complicated. It’s also easily compromised by blatant bias, downright lies, and the media organizations that enable them,” Harris wrote.
Harris left her political future up in the air, providing vague details about her plans going forward. She said, “Today I am no longer sure,” about wanting to change the system from the inside because it’s failing us.
“In this critical moment, working within the system, by itself, is not proving to be enough. I’ll no longer sit in D.C. in the grandeur of the ceremonial office. I will be with the people, in towns and communities where I can listen to their ideas on how we rebuild trust, empathy, and a government worthy of the ideas of this country,” she said.