Former U.S. vice-president Kamala Harris has suggested that Democrats around former president Joe Biden didn't do enough to prevent him from embarking on an ultimately doomed re-election bid in 2024, according to an excerpt from a new book.
In an excerpt of 107 Days — a reference to the length of her unexpected presidential campaign — Harris said that as questions swirled about whether Biden should seek re-election, she and others left the decision to the 81-year-old president and his wife, Jill.
"Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness," Harris said, according to the excerpt published Wednesday by the Atlantic.
Biden had a disastrous performance in an atypically early presidential debate in June 2024, where he struggled to remember basic facts or challenge inaccurate statements from Republican challenger Donald Trump. Weeks later, Biden became the first president since Lyndon Johnson in 1968 to announce an ending to the re-election bid.
Since then, journalists have questioned the degree to which Biden was in cognitive decline, and whether his closest aides in the White House covered up for a commander-in-chief unable to handle the demands of the job. The White House, and Republicans in Congress, have promised to investigate the matter.
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Biden 'on his worst day' more capable than Trump: HarrisIn the excerpt, Harris pushes back at questions about Biden's fitness — at least in comparison to Trump.
"On his worst day, he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best," she writes. "But at 81, Joe got tired. 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."
Harris, supported by Biden, campaigning in Pittsburgh on Sept. 2, 2024. (Elizabeth Frantz/The Associated Press)That tone is consistent with the immediate aftermath of the debate, in which Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom were arguably the president's biggest defenders, aside from his wife. Harris said at the time "there's no question" Biden had a slow start in the debate, but thought he finished strongly and focused on facts.
The excerpt doesn't make clear how Harris thinks key Democrats could have amassed to coax Biden to step aside. Harris suggests she would the wrong person to lead that charge, given it would look like "naked ambition" on her part.
Biden's unique journey to the White House, after two previous failed presidential bids, also played a role.
"He was, by some measures, the most consistently underestimated man in Washington," writes Harris. "He'd been right about his tactics for pushing his agenda through a resistant Congress. It was just possible he was right about this, too."
WATCH l Harris criticizes Trump tariffs, deportation campaign: Former U.S. vice-president and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris called on Americans to stand up to President Donald Trump and his violation of 'American ideals' in her first major speech since losing the election.Biden, despite the sting of bowing out amid pressure within the Democratic Party, advocated for Harris as the candidate and campaigned for her. Since leaving Washington, Biden has announced a cancer diagnosis and recently underwent a surgical procedure.
Harris has kept a low profile in the months since her defeat, though she did offer public criticism of Trump's second presidency at a previously scheduled conference.
History made in 2020Biden chose Harris as his running mate in August 2020, calling her a "fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country's finest public servants." The Biden campaign had strongly suggested it would select a woman of colour for his running mate, and Harris was chosen even after pointed criticism of Biden in earlier debates.
Harris, a lawyer by profession, had served one term in the U.S. Senate at the time, having previously been California attorney general and district attorney in San Francisco.
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With Biden's 2020 win, she became the first woman to serve as U.S. vice-president.
It was not immediately clear how unsparing Harris is in her criticisms of policy decisions made by the Biden administration in the book. While she has ruled out running to succeed Newsom as California's governor next year, she has not made a definitive statement about a 2028 bid for the White House, making a scorched-earth account highly unlikely.
But Harris does write that "the White House rarely pushed back" in its communications "when Fox News attacked me on everything from my laugh, to my tone of voice, to whom I'd dated in my 20s, or claimed I was a 'DEI hire,'" a reference to a pejorative term used in connection with people hired from underrepresented groups.
Harris also says her vice-president's office had typical first-year White House "staff churn," in response to multiple reports from U.S. media outlets about employee turnover.
Harris, with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on her ticket, lost to Trump by an 312-226 margin in the all-important electoral college count, and by over two million votes across the U.S., an advantage of 1.5 percentage points.
Harris loyalists could point to the fact that another bid is warranted, given that in a campaign far shorter than the 18-month to two-year odysseys now typical of presidential candidates, she contested the third consecutive bitterly close U.S. election.
Harris was widely seen as outperforming Trump in their lone debate, and they were separated by just 230,000 votes total in the swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which collectively account for 44 electoral college votes.
In 2020, however, Harris never got to the first contest in Iowa in a crowded Democratic field of presidential candidates, bowing out of that race.
Born in Oakland, Calif., to a father from Jamaica and mother from India, Harris spent most of her youth in Northern California, but attended high school in Quebec, living with her mother and sister there after her parents split up.
Harris's book, her fourth, will be published by Simon & Schuster on Sept. 23. She is set to discuss the book the next day in New York City as part of a promotional tour that will also include a stop in Toronto on Nov. 16.