Due to problems with a distributor, my local library took awhile to get Kamala Harris’s 107 Days. With that resolved and book finally in hand, I sat down this month to read it.

Harris wrote the book, in theory, as a journal of her brief 2024 campaign. And she captures the feeling of a whirlwind race to the presidency. But along the way, Harris also does the work of a traditional political autobiography. She just introduces herself more briefly and compactly than usual.

In a way, I found this refreshing. I read a lot of political autobiography. Much of it ends up as fluff. Harris comes off as more honest than most politicos. Yes, in part 107 Days makes her case for running again in 2028. That’s clear enough. But that case is short(er than usual) on cliches. And I think she stays upfront about her decisions and motives.

But the book irked me in many ways. What, then, is its problem?

Harris centers the book on an argument: if she had had more time to make her case, she would’ve won. But this is transparently a bad argument. To cite one obvious problem, Harris’s standing didn’t improve as the campaign wore on. If anything, her numbers regressed after a brief honeymoon phase in the first month or so.

But let’s take a closer look at 107 Days and see for ourselves.

Schrodinger’s Vice President

Here’s one problem with Harris’s excuses in 107 Days: she often steps over herself.

In discussing her VP role, she claims Joe Biden undermined her. On her telling, Biden and his team never got over their suspicion that she’d betray them. When she attacked him in a 2020 primary debate, this marked her as forever disloyal. Consequently, Biden kept her in the background during his presidency by hiding her from the press. And then when it came time to hand her the reins, Biden hesitated. This helped cost Harris the presidency.

That’s all well and good. But then when discussing the problems with her VP office, specifically its high turnover rate in her first year, Harris cites ‘constant press attention.’ In other words, Biden tossed her in front of the press too often and used her as a foil for his administration.

So, in the end, which is it? Did Biden hide her away from the press, or did she wilt in the endless press attention? Harris oddly tries to have it both ways.

Much of the book works like that. It’s clear that the main goal of this book is to defend Harris by any means necessary, regardless of whether one defense contradicts another.

Woman of the People?

Harris presents herself as a candidate who represents new or overlooked voters and interest groups. But her examples mostly amount to an endless string of wealthy people.

She introduces herself in the story at a point where she’s deep in conversation with the celebrity Usher about promoting black business owners. Incidentally, this amounted merely to the first of seemingly dozens of shout outs to business owners in the book. We hear hardly a mention of the black working class people those very same business owners exploit for profit.

Harris spends much of her personal time in the book hanging out with celebrities or, at best, wealthy sorority alums. We get multiple mentions of Charli XCX, who is apparently some kind of celebrity who calls people ‘brat.’ Apparently this is a good thing.

Harris hangs out with Oprah. She hangs out with Bon Jovi. And so on.

The best I can make of all this is that Harris’s notion of ‘overlooked voters’ extends to a rainbow coalition of wealthy people. She seems to value the opinion of consultants more than regular people.

And let’s not get started on the baloney she spouts on Gaza. She, of course, repeats the standard false narrative that Biden was trying to end the war, but was undermined by Netanyahu. Harris, of course, worked tirelessly for a ceasefire.

The problem is that few Americans buy this inane bullshit by now. Anyone who’s not a mindless partisan Democrat knows Biden could’ve gotten the ceasefire whenever he wanted it. He just didn’t want it.

Psyching Yourself Out

At times, Harris appeared to psych herself out on identity issues.

After the 2020 election cycle, I wrote about Elizabeth Warren’s campaign. In one post, I suggested the Warren campaign psyched itself out over gender bias.

In other words, one problem with the Warren campaign was its perception that gender bias among voters would harm her. By way of response to this alleged bias, the campaign made a series of poor decisions. In particular, Warren put to rest the ‘blood and teeth‘ image of herself as a fighter in favor of a tepid, dull version of herself.

This cost her votes.

But my point here isn’t to relitigate 2020 or talk about Warren. It’s that Harris seems to have made a similar move when it came time to select her VP candidate. She claims in 107 Days that Pete Buttigieg was her first choice. But she pulled back.

Why?

Harris’s Claim

Harris says the U.S. couldn’t handle a presidential ticket with a black woman with a Jewish husband and a gay man. Instead, she chose a guy (Tim Walz) who would be loyal to her and more relatable to ‘ordinary Americans.’

But as with Warren, this amounts to identitarian twaddle.

Harris sold voters short. Most Americans don’t base their vote on stuff like this. We find this kind of identity fetish primarily among the far right and wealthy and/or highly educated liberals. In other words, it’s people in Harris’s circles who worry about this stuff, not ‘ordinary Americans.’

It’s not difficult to see why Harris’s reasoning is silly.

First of all, the fact that she had a Jewish husband was 100% irrelevant to both the campaign and its results. No one cared about Harris’s husband at all, let alone his religion. And the vast majority of voters couldn’t pick the guy out of a lineup.

But even Harris’s gender and race didn’t matter in the way she thinks it did.

Harris’s biggest problem is that she ran as an member of the incumbent party in turbulent times after a global pandemic. The incumbent President – Joe Biden – was deeply unpopular and had just spent months lying to the country about his fitness for office. Harris desperately needed to distinguish herself from Biden, and she repeatedly failed to do so. It may even have been an impossible mission.

Her gender and race probably cost her a small slice of voters. But they were also the only thing she really pointed to in order to distinguish herself from Biden. That gained her as many votes as it cost her.

Buttigieg and Barack Obama

Look, I’m not a Buttigieg fan. I think the guy sits somewhere near the pinnacle of empty corporate suit who appeals to well educated, managerial type liberals. I’m not going to vote for the guy if he appears on my ballot.

But he nailed it in his response to Harris. Buttigieg claimed that American voters are smarter than Harris credits them. He recognized that Harris sold Americans short.

Well, that was a big fucking softball, folks. But I have to credit Buttigieg for hitting it out of the park. And when Barack Obama ran in the 2008 election cycle, he made a similar point about voter perception of his race. Obama was right, too.

If Harris thought Buttigieg was the best vice presidential candidate, she should’ve chosen him. Anything else was political malpractice.

For Harris to blame anyone other than herself for this decision is a lousy excuse-making exercise.

Why Harris Lost

The actual story of why Harris lost is a fairly simple one. And it’s one Harris barely gets around to addressing in 107 Days.

Let’s review.

The Democratic Party and Joe Biden were massively unpopular. And they were unpopular for a few reasons.

First, they took office at the start of a post-pandemic inflation cycle. This cycle wiped out many incumbent parties around the world. And, on top of this, the Biden Administration struggled mightily to communicate some of the longer term, structural changes it made that would pay off over the course of years rather than months.

Many people, Harris included, want to cloud this picture by appeal to gender, race, and internal politics. But those things had little to do with Harris’s loss. If anything, Harris’s gender and race proved a very mild benefit to her, in the sense that it helped her distinguish herself from Biden and his unpopularity.

Harris’s campaign certainly did little to put space between her and Biden.

And so, there’s not much to learn from Harris’s book. It combines a campaign journal with a standard autobiography. And it does neither of those things well.

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