When it was all over, Kamala Harris couldn’t believe it. “I could barely breathe,” she writes in her new book about learning she had lost the 2024 presidential election to Donald Trump.
One of her aides peeled “Madame President” off celebratory cupcakes before serving them to crushed staffers. Harris kept asking, “My God, my God, what will happen to our country?”
The next morning was no easier. “I was ashamed to realize I was in the denial and bargaining stages of grief, a very long way from acceptance,” she wrote.
It’s one of several raw admissions in Harris’ book, “107 Days,” that is scheduled for release Tuesday. The title refers to the length of the hyperspeed campaign that the former vice president launched against Trump after Joe Biden dropped out of the race.
Although Harris earned a reputation as guarded and circumspect, the book has the tone of someone who is finished biting her tongue. She concedes mistakes, reveals frustrations and details some of the stranger moments from her race.
The book isn’t a winding memoir or a political treatise, and Harris doesn’t disclose any future plans. Instead, it reads like a ticking time bomb, with each chapter counting down to Election Day.
Here’s some memorable moments.
‘Joe got tired’
Harris insists in the book that she had no concerns about Biden’s ability to serve as president. “If I believed that, I would have said so.”
“But at eighty-one, Joe got tired,” Harris wrote. “That’s when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles.”
Harris wrote that Biden’s inner circle “should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” However, “it seemed that the worse things got, the more they pushed him.”
The tenuous situation unraveled when Biden and Trump faced off with each other. “As soon as he walked onto the debate stage in Atlanta, I could see he wasn’t right,” Harris wrote.
Biden’s team appeared to be in denial. Afterward, they gave Harris talking points that said “JOE BIDEN WON.”
Biden was a source of frustration
Harris wrote warmly of her partnership with Biden, but there were frosty moments too. As Biden faced calls to drop out of the race, he invited Harris to join him for a Fourth of July celebration at the White House.
First lady Jill Biden pulled Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff aside. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Are you supporting us?”
Later, in private, Emhoff erupted in anger. “They have to ask if we’re loyal?”
Another difficult episode came after Harris had replaced Biden at the top of the ticket and was preparing for her own debate with Trump.
Shortly before she took the stage, Biden called to say he heard from his brother that Harris had been badmouthing him, upsetting some power brokers in Philadelphia. Then he rambled about his own debate performances while Harris was “barely listening.”
“I just couldn’t understand why he would call me, right now, and make it all about himself,” she wrote.
Hindsight is 20/20
Harris admits some mistakes of her own, particularly a damaging appearance on “The View” talk show. When one of the hosts asked what she would have done differently than Biden during the previous four years, Harris blanked on the talking points she had prepared and simply said, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”
“I had no idea I’d just pulled the pin on a hand grenade,” Harris writes. Around the studio, “my staff were besides themselves” about how she had just given a “gift to the Trump campaign.”
Harris wrote that she didn’t want to criticize Biden or litigate any of the areas where they disagreed. But she also didn’t understand how much her association with the president was holding back her candidacy.
David Plouffe, a senior adviser, told Harris bluntly that “people hate Joe Biden.”
The VP’s search for a VP
There’s plenty of grist in the book that could make the next Democratic convention a little more awkward.
Harris wrote that Pete Buttigieg, Biden’s transportation secretary and a former mayor from Indiana, was her first choice to be her running mate. He’s also gay, and Harris thought it was “too big of a risk” to pick him while already asking voters to accept a Black woman as president.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro was another possibility. But Harris “had a nagging concern that he would be unable to settle for a role as number two and that it would wear on our partnership.”
She ended up going with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, but his debate performance against JD Vance left her yelling at the television screen. “You’re not there to make friends with the guy who is attacking your running mate,” she said.
There’s only one reference to California Gov. Gavin Newsom in the book. When Harris reached out to him after Biden ended his reelection campaign, he texted, “Hiking. Will call back,” but he never did.
Taking over the campaign
Harris’ brother-in-law is Tony West, a former top Justice Department official and member of her inner circle of political advisers. While Harris was serving as vice president, West put together what was known as the “Red File,” a collection of plans in case something happened to Biden.
West argued that it would be foolish not to prepare. Harris writes that she “didn’t want to dwell on such an eventuality” and “I left it in his hands.”
He kept refreshing the document as people pressured Biden to drop out, which came in handy when Biden finally pulled the plug on his reelection campaign.
Harris writes that Biden was planning to wait a day before endorsing her as his successor, an idea that horrified her.
“If you want to put me in the strongest position, you have to endorse me now,” she recalled telling him. Harris prevailed, and the endorsement happened shortly after Biden announced that he was done.
Things got weird sometimes
Campaigns can be hallucinatory affairs, and this one was full of bizarre moments.
Harris writes that she warmed up for her convention speech with a professional voice coach who “wanted me to stand there and emit animal noises.” A little hesitant, Harris got her entire team to make “hums, grunts and trills” with her.
Harris also writes about talking with Trump after a second assassination attempt against him. Despite tearing into her on the campaign trail, Trump proceeded to flatter his opponent.
“How do I say bad things about you now?” he said. “I’m going to tone it down. I will. You’re going to see.” Then Trump said that his daughter Ivanka “is your big fan.”
When the call was over, Harris was left marveling at Trump’s ability to turn on the charm. “He’s a con man,” she thought. “He’s really good at it.”
