Kamala Harris is not known for breaking publicly with Joe Biden. For years, she stood as his partner, defending him in front of cameras, accepting tough assignments, and declining to push back when the chatter about his age and political stamina got louder. But in a forthcoming memoir, Harris makes her sharpest departure yet from the man she served, writing that it was a mistake—“recklessness,” in her word—to let Biden and his wife decide on their own whether he should run for reelection.
The book, 107 Days, offers the most detailed look yet at Harris’ abbreviated 2024 campaign and her uneasy role in the final year of Biden’s presidency. An excerpt published Wednesday in The Atlantic captures Harris reflecting on how deference to Biden’s personal decision-making left the Democratic Party exposed. “We all said it, like a mantra,” Harris writes. “‘It’s Joe and Jill’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.”
The memoir paints a picture of a White House that often failed to support her, even when her success would have been in Biden’s interest. When her own poll numbers ticked up, Harris recalls, Biden’s inner circle bristled at the contrast. “None of them grasped that if I did well, he did well,” she writes, suggesting that her visibility as a capable partner could have reassured a country uneasy with Biden’s age. “His team didn’t get it.”
The book also revisits one of the lowest moments of her campaign: an appearance on The View last October. Asked what she would have done differently than Biden over the previous four years, Harris said, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.” That response, she now admits, was an albatross, endlessly replayed in Trump’s ads as proof that she had nothing to say for herself.
Harris is careful not to echo Republican attacks on Biden’s age, but she doesn’t shy away from describing its effects. She writes, “On his worst day, he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best.”
The memoir also lingers on the strained mechanics of their working relationship. Harris describes being left undefended when Republicans branded her “border czar” and saddled her with the blame for immigration policy failures. She claims Biden’s communications team did little to clarify her role or promote her progress, and in some cases even fueled negative narratives about her performance.
The timing of the chapter excerpt is notable. Harris situates her reflections in late July 2024, just after she had been elevated to the top of the ticket and Biden finally announced his withdrawal in an Oval Office address. Even then, Harris writes, the relationship carried a sting. “It was almost nine minutes into the 11-minute address,” she recalls, “before he mentioned me.”
Harris announced earlier this year she would not run for governor of California but has left open the possibility of another presidential campaign. Whether 107 Days is the first step toward rehabilitating her national profile or the final word on her time in the spotlight, its candor sets it apart from the usual carefully scripted political memoir. For Harris, it’s also a reckoning—with Biden, with her party, and with the limits of her own loyalty.
