This is the perspective that the former vice president offers in her upcoming memoir about her brief 2024 campaign, marking a notable departure from the supportive stance she maintained toward her former boss both during and after their tenure in office.
“‘It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We repeated that like a mantra, as if we’d been put under a spell,” Harris notes in the initial excerpt from “107 Days,” published Wednesday morning by The Atlantic.
That comment haunted her through the final weeks of coverage and advertising by Donald Trump’s campaign as she went on to her narrow loss.
She also addresses one of the most challenging issues she faced while compiling this memoir: the impact of Biden’s age both publicly and privately.
Harris disputes that there was any serious problem.
“On his worst day, he possessed far greater knowledge, a stronger ability to exercise judgment, and more compassion than Donald Trump on his best. However, at 81, Joe became fatigued,” Harris writes.
“This was when his age manifested in physical and verbal missteps. It’s not surprising that the debate disaster occurred after two consecutive trips to Europe and a flight to the West Coast for a Hollywood fundraiser. I don’t believe it was due to incapacity. If I did, I would have said so. While I am loyal to President Biden, my loyalty to my country is greater.”
Harris announced over the summer she would not be pursuing the California governorship next year, as many anticipated, but she has kept the possibility of another presidential bid open, though several of her close associates have informed CNN they suspect her time running for office may be over.
In the meantime, her book, set to be released in two weeks, is another development in an interconnected but sometimes troubled relationship between her and Biden, which stretches back to her friendship with Biden’s beloved late son Beau through the moment in the first primary debate in June 2019 when she attacked Biden as wrong for his 1970s position on school busing and then through the ups and downs of serving together in the White House.
Harris writes about being undercut by Biden and his staff, accusing them of neither defending nor highlighting her and even “adding fuel to negative narratives that sprang up around me.”
Her assignment from Biden to be the point person for migration issues stemming from Central America, Harris writes, was a perfect example.
“When Republicans mischaracterised my role as ‘border czar,’ no one in the White House comms team helped me to effectively push back and explain what I had really been tasked to do, nor to highlight any of the progress I had achieved,” adding several paragraphs later, “Instead, I shouldered the blame for the porous border, an issue that had proved intractable for Democratic and Republican administrations alike.”
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A spokesperson for Biden did not have an immediate comment and several longtime aides did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.
Sen. Chris Coons, a longtime Biden confidant representing his home state of Delaware, told “CNN News Central” that he understood Harris second-guessing Biden’s decision. Pushed on whether Democrats needed to discuss the Biden campaign in greater detail, Coons said the party should instead focus on Trump’s presidency.
“The interest in relitigating a decision made by a former president a year and a half ago is pretty limited in the folks I’m talking to,” Coons said.
Asked for his response to the book, Andrew Bates, who served as a spokesperson for the Biden White House, pointed to Democratic successes in special elections since Trump returned to office.
“We’re making an effective case against Trump’s cost-raising agenda and chaos,” Bates told CNN. “And I’m proud to have worked for an administration led by two people who are not in the Epstein files.”
The chapter in the excerpt is written about July 24, 2024, a few days after Harris took over as the nominee following nearly a month of Democratic trauma and when Biden finally delivered an Oval Office address to discuss his exit.
Even that came with a sour note, Harris writes.
“It was almost nine minutes into the 11-minute address,” she recalls, “before he mentioned me.”
