Former Vice President Kamala Harris just released “107 Days,” recounting her brief tenure as the Democrats’ presidential nominee after President Joe Biden dropped out. Her insider’s view of that transition affirms what others since have revealed about Biden’s mental composition.
“At eighty-one, Joe got tired,” she writes. “That’s when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles.” She called his decision to run again “reckless.”
The bottom fell out of Biden’s candidacy during his disastrous debate with Donald Trump. She remembers, “As soon as he walked onto the debate stage in Atlanta, I could see he wasn’t right.”
In the book, Harris concedes her own mistakes as a candidate, including during one appearance she made on “The View” which came to define her campaign. Asked what she would do differently from Biden, a choice opportunity to differentiate herself, she replied, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.” In the book, she called that answer as “a gift to the Trump campaign.”
Gaining the most controversy is her section on picking a vice presidential running mate. Her first choice was Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, “an ideal partner – if I were a straight white man.” She said it was “too big a risk” asking the electorate to accept the team of a black woman and a gay man.
Asked about this passage, Buttigieg responded that he was “surprised” by it and said,“My experience in politics has been that the way that you earn trust with voters is based mostly on what they think you’re going to do for their lives, not on categories.” He’s right.
Also in the book, Harris also put Gov. Gavin Newsom on blast. She explains that she called the governor the moment she learned President Biden was dropping out of the race. “Hiking. Will call back,” Newsom responded. According to Harris, he never did call her back.
“You want to waste your time with this? We’ll do it,” Newsom told a group of reporters when asked about this. “I was up there hiking, there was an unknown number. Meanwhile, I was on a text exchange trying to get in touch with the Biden administration.”
In the Afterword of her book, available online, “107 Days” moves to look at the future. Naturally she attacks Trump’s policies. We give her credit for saying, “Tariffs are a tax on everyday Americans,” because that’s obviously true no matter how much Republicans want to pretend otherwise.
Her own solutions are thin, amounting to, “We need to come up with our own blueprint that sets out our alternative vision for our country.”
Sure, but Harris apparently hasn’t figured out what that blueprint might look like even after all of this time. Her party is still going through an identity crisis, one so intense it’s taking Gov. Newsom seriously as a leader to rally behind. Meanwhile, others in her party are flirting with the false promise of socialism by way of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Harris says she’s going to spend time going around the country talking to Americans. We’ve interviewed her in the past and invite her to a conversation any time.
