The former vice president comes clean in ‘107 Days’ and probably burns a lot of bridges in the process
BY: JACOB POLITTE
Online Editor
At times, Kamala Harris’ “107 Days” feels like an exercise in self-pity. The story of the losing side that ended up running the shortest presidential campaign in history, Harris largely goes on defense, and goes in rather hard on the Democratic Party at a time where they seem disjointed and ununited. This tell-all isn’t designed to quell that feeling… if anything, it’s a match that relights the fire of what led to the democrats collapse in the 2024 elections. It’s just another book that adds to the blame game. That’s not to say that it isn’t compulsively readable, because it absolutely is. It’s fascinating hearing about the inner workings of the campaign directly from the head honcho of it all, even as that story reveals that she didn’t take advantage of the sway she had as the democratic nominee.
Kamala Harris insists that she’s not “done” helping this country, but this book makes it seem as if she’s definitely done holding political office. Many bridges get burned, and while she gives credit where credit is due, she often expresses frustration with various people in her campaign’s orbit. No one is safe. Josh Shapiro gets cut down to size, Gavin Newsom gets some shade thrown his way and even Nancy Pelosi gets some blowback.
Surprisingly, Harris does in “107 Days” what she did not do during the campaign: she throws Joe Biden under the bus. She does it as gently as she can, but still is blunt enough to possibly surprise some readers given how much she attempted to salvage the former President’s legacy in her short campaign. She’s nicer than many people probably were hoping for, but she definitely doesn’t treat his failures with kid gloves. She calls the Bidens’ decision to let Joe run again “reckless.” She calls out members of the Biden White House for not truly wanting her to succeed, and for stifling her. She privately urges him to do more to help those in Gaza much harder than she ever did in public, a plea that fell on deaf ears. And she recalls her bewilderment that the Bidens, even in 2024 as the time approached for Biden to step down and well after, questioned her loyalty repeatedly.
In a way, the honesty on display here is refreshing. There’s a good possibility that Harris is done holding any sort of political office, so she has no reason to hold back or to lie. It’s just a shame her unburdening has come along too late.
“107 Days,” intentionally or not, serves as a mirror to democrats who are questioning why they lost. At times, Harris makes this cast of characters seem egomaniacal at worst and untrusting at best. More than any other book from any politician, Harris shines a real light on the inner workings of the party and all of the failures that happened and are currently still happening.
That’s not to say Harris herself is the perfect main character of sorts. There are plenty of points in “107 Days” where she says things that make her look questionable, and she doesn’t acknowledge all of her failures. She frames the Israel-Hamas conflict and its effect on Gaza as one of Biden’s most “inadequate” responses, but admits to being frustrated with left-wing protestors interrupting her rallies. She admits to being frustrated with her own media appearances at times in the final weeks of the race, but doesn’t fully reckon with why some comments may have tanked her campaign. She acknowledges the lies that Elon Musk and Fox News helped to spread, but fails to provide an adequate response for not countering them. And she has plenty of praise to give to some of the people she spent parts of her narrative dragging, which also sends a mixed message.
That’s not to say that Republicans don’t get torched at times too, JD Vance in particular. But “107 Days” is a chronicle of how the other party lost everything, from the woman who tried to step in and stop the bleeding. It’s a story of failure.
Time will tell if it leads to any sort of retrospection or not, but one thing’s for sure: Kamala Harris is the only person that has nothing to lose either way.
