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Kamala Harris calls Joe Biden’s decision to seek re-election in 2024 “recklessness” in her new memoir and questions the former president’s judgment while revealing her own frustrations about being marginalized within the administration.
In passages published by the Atlantic on Wednesday from 107 Days, her memoir chronicling her presidential campaign, Harris breaks on certain points from her typically loyal public stance.
She writes how she felt sidelined within the White House, with her chief of staff fighting to prevent her from standing “like a potted plant” at events, and the administration failing to defend her against Fox News attacks branding her a “DEI hire”.
Of Biden’s decision to run for a second term, she writes: “Was it grace, or was it recklessness? 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.”
As vice-president, Harris says, she felt caught in an impossible position: unable to counsel Biden against running without appearing self-interested.
“And of all the people in the White House, I was in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out,” she writes. “I knew it would come off to him as incredibly self-serving if I advised him not to run. He would see it as naked ambition, perhaps as poisonous disloyalty, even if my only message was: don’t let the other guy win.”
Harris portrays the White House as deferential to Biden’s decision-making, writing: “‘It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized.”
The excerpts reveal Harris’s frustration with what she describes as systematic marginalization within the administration. In one example, she writes that her chief of staff, Lorraine Voles, “constantly had to advocate for my role at events: ‘She’s not going to stand there like a potted plant. Give her two minutes of remarks. Have her introduce the president.’”
Harris adds: “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’, the White House rarely pushed back with my actual résumé: two terms elected DA, top cop in the second-largest department of justice in the United States, senator representing one in eight Americans.”
Despite the White House having “a huge comms team” and daily press briefings, Harris writes, “getting anything positive said about my work or any defense against untrue attacks was almost impossible”.
She recounted watching Biden’s Oval Office speech announcing his withdrawal from the race: “It was almost nine minutes into the 11-minute address before he mentioned me.”
Harris does, however, defend Biden’s mental capacity during his presidency, attributing his struggles to age-related fatigue rather than cognitive decline.
“Many people want to spin up a narrative of some big conspiracy at the White House to hide Joe Biden’s infirmity. Here is the truth as I lived it,” she writes. “Joe Biden was a smart guy with long experience and deep conviction, able to discharge the duties of president.
“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 continues. “That’s when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles.”
She suggests Biden’s poor debate performance was linked to his schedule. “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 adds: “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.”
The memoir will be published on 23 September, and Harris has announced a book tour spanning 15 cities, including stops in the UK and Canada.
Joe and Jill Biden’s office did not respond for a request for comment.
