Book Review: 107 Days by Kamala Harris
On June 27, 2024, then President Joe Biden participated in a nationally televised debate with former president Donald Trump, and by most accounts it was a disaster for him. Trump was his usual bombastic self, spinning conspiracies, spouting lies, disseminating disinformation and half-truths, bragging, interrupting, and whining. The lack of a moderator and fact checkers was a boon for him. Yet if non-MAGA Republicans weren’t embarrassed, they should have been. Trump’s continued support, popularity and subsequent re-election show just how low American politics has sunk. The silence of the institutional Republican Party speaks volumes. The party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Robert Taft, Dwight Eisenhower, and yes, even Richard Nixon will be forever tainted.
On the other hand, Democrats had been privately worried for months as whispers about Biden’s physical appearance and mental acuity began to spread in Washington. Between 2021 and 2023 he had slipped, tripped, stumbled, or fallen more than half a dozen times going up or down the stairs of Air Force One, and had fallen off a bicycle in June 2022. His lack of engagement with the press made it look as though he was hiding. During the debate Biden looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights. He was wan, tired and sounded listless. (In defense of Biden, Trump’s ignorance, venality, lying, criminality, and conceit often leave me baffled and speechless too, but I wasn’t running for president.) His wife later said she was so alarmed at his performance that she worried he might have been in the midst of a stroke. Although he grew stronger as the debate wore on, first impressions are everything, and he didn’t leave a good one.
The fallout was brutal and swift, and the explanation from the Biden campaign – that he was coming off two international trips, a campaign fund raiser in Los Angeles, and had a cold – didn’t fly. In a little over a month, the “scrappy kid from Scranton” dropped out of the race and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris. She had one hundred seven days to convince Americans to put her in the White House.
Harris had not been a very visible vice president; indeed, she implied she was often ignored or sidelined by the president’s team. Yet she writes positively about Biden’s intelligence, kindness, love of country and their relationship and was complimentary of his performance in office, especially his conduct of foreign policy. She admitted, however, that by the time election year rolled around, he lacked the stamina he had in previous years. Yet Harris insists there is a distinction to be made between his “ability to campaign and his ability to govern.” She appears to have had no doubts about the latter.
Harris also says that she did not feel as though she was in a position to advise Biden not to run. At best it would have looked self-serving; at worst, ruthless. She was proud to be his vice president, impressed by his decades long career in public service, and fond of him personally. Everyone around the president was insisting it was a decision that was solely up to him and the First Lady, but Harris makes it clear that she was torn. He had called her several days before his public announcement to tell him of his decision to drop out, and she asked him if he was sure. Later she said of his initial decision to run for re-election, “Was it grace or 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.”
Once Biden declined to run and endorsed her, Harris quickly worked to line up support among prominent Democrats and get ready for the August 2024 convention. Bill and Hillary Clinton supported her immediately as did South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. Former president Obama was more circumspect, encouraging her to wait and let Biden have the spotlight for a bit. In July 2024 he and Michelle formally endorsed her candidacy and Obama campaigned on her behalf. Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who played an important role in dissuading Biden from running for re-election, endorsed Harris shortly after Biden withdrew, raised money and also campaigned for Harris. California Governor Gavin Newsom, often spoken of as a possible candidate for the 2028 presidential election, claimed to be unavailable when Harris called him and never returned her call, doubtless keeping his options open for the future.
Even though Biden had declined to run, he could have easily made his staff and other resources available to Harris. Generally, he did not. Biden also undercut Harris when he referred to Trump supporters as “garbage” and made the stupid decision to jokingly don a MAGA hat. And while Jill Biden publicly supported Harris, that support appeared tepid.
107 Days is primarily a day-by-day account of the 2024 Harris campaign. The modern presidential campaign, that some political scientists say dates back to 1974 when former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter tossed his hat into the ring two years ahead of the presidential election, has typically been a long process. A persistent theme in the book is that one hundred seven days – barely three months – was simply not enough time for voters to get to know her and her positions on the issues.
Harris takes the reader through the process of choosing a running mate; her preparation for the debates; and how the campaign interacted with voters, Democratic leaders, Democratic officials across the country, and with the institutional Democratic Party. She was especially conscious of the barriers she was breaking. Her racial identity – her father is black Jamaican and her mother Asian Indian – her gender and relative youth were historic. She writes of the example she was setting for her nieces and the pride her husband and extended family felt regarding her candidacy.
An interesting episode during the campaign was Trump’s disingenuous claim that he did not know that Harris is black, and he implied that she should prove it. Harris also says her mother knew when she was growing up that in spite of their mixed racial lineage, she was rearing two black girls. She has always identified as black. Even if she pulled a Tiger Woods and insisted on referring to herself as someone of mixed race, America still operates under the one-drop rule. For the vast majority of Americans, Harris is a black woman. The Vice President responded angrily to Trump’s below-the-belt comment. “Are you fucking kidding me? Today he wants me to prove my race. What’s next? He’ll say I’m not a woman and I’ll need to show my vagina?”
While reading 107 Days I couldn’t help but think back to the stories after Biden won the 2020 election that claimed he saw himself as a transitional figure and probably wouldn’t run for a second term in 2024. But what modern president hasn’t wanted a second term? Furthermore, ensuring that Trump did not return to the White House had to have been a huge part of his decision to run for re-election. Had he not done so, however, there would have been no disastrous debate with Trump. There would have been a primary season, multiple candidates crisscrossing the country and talking to the American people, and a convention where issues would have been thrashed out and a candidate chosen to represent the Democratic party and run in the general election. But of course, hindsight is 20-20.
In the end, Harris fulfilled her constitutional duty as president of the Senate by announcing and certifying her own defeat at the hands of Donald Trump as did former Vice President Al Gore when he announced the victory of Texas governor George W. Bush in 2000 and his own loss. She did so with professionalism and grace.
It is clear in 107 Days that Harris isn’t wallowing in regrets, although she has a few. Chief among them is her statement that she could not think of anything she would have done differently from Biden if she had been the one making the decisions in the White House. While it may have been politic and kind, it damaged her ability to show her independence from the Biden administration. She does say, however, that her years as vice president and her presidential campaign have convinced her that change within the system is not possible. She is not clear, however, what change could or should look like.
Harris admits that the experience of running for president was searing. “It says a lot about how traumatized we both were by what happened that night that Doug and I never discussed it with each other until I sat down to write this book.”
107 Days is a worthy addition to the canon of presidential campaign literature. However, its publication surely means that what appeared to be a good relationship between Harris and the Bidens is dead in the water. Former First Lady Jill Biden, who allegedly questioned Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff about their loyalty to the president, will probably never forgive Kamala Harris for writing the book.