REVIEW: '107 Days' by Kamala Harris

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Revisiting what has been, still burdened by what never was.

Kamala Harris has no idea what she's doing. She demonstrated as much from the moment she entered the 2020 Democratic primary, throughout her tenure as vice president, and on numerous occasions during her 107-day campaign for president. Her postelection memoir, 107 Days, attempts to explain why Donald Trump bested her in a high-stakes contest to decide the future of American democracy and recount what she "saw, experienced, and learned" in the process.

Spoiler alert: Harris doesn't have a clue. She just knows that it wasn't her fault. There wasn't enough time, as the title implies. She was too busy solving the nation's problems as vice president to campaign effectively. Fox News was spreading misinformation. Her team dropped the ball, and so did the American people, who were too dumb to appreciate the historic success of her administration and the wisdom of her policy proposals. Republicans were too racist, obviously. "I did not have time, in 107 days, to undo ten years of Trump's demonization of immigrants," she writes, handwaving the legitimate outrage over the lenient Biden-Harris border policies that even former White House staffers have acknowledged were disastrous for Democrats.

The book is full of lines that cast serious doubt on Harris's competence and ability to grasp how American politics works outside the state of California. The word inflation rarely appears, except when Harris is praising the Inflation Reduction Act as "the most consequential climate bill ever enacted into law." She seems genuinely aggrieved that most voters were "focused on the cost of things today," rather than the projected future savings thanks to "generous rebates" for families who installed heat pumps and other energy-efficient appliances. She is astounded to learn that young people based their votes on "perceived economic interests," rather than on niche issues such as abortion, climate change, or hatred of Israel.

In Harris's view, these extraordinary circumstances—voters prioritizing the economy—were uniquely unfair to her. "Part of the challenge with this very short campaign was that we had to focus on needs that felt more immediate, like how to deal with the grocery bill or the cost of childcare," Harris explains with baffling earnestness, as if revealing the secrets of the universe to a room full of child actors.

The failed candidate is most relatable when blaming Joe Biden and the "recklessness" of his decision to run for reelection. Harris is not entirely wrong that Biden, who made her his running mate in 2020 because he was pressured into picking a black woman, set her up to fail. It's hard not to feel a little sorry for Harris when she recalls her maddening interactions with Joe, Dr. Jill, and their cabal of sycophants. For example, she describes her exasperated reaction when, moments after Biden had finished humiliating himself at the CNN debate, she was handed a sheet of talking points instructing her to declare victory and proclaim that Biden had "fought through his cold as he is fighting for the American people." Girl, we feel you.

On the other hand, Harris was an awful candidate with horrible instincts and a unique capacity for incoherence. She thought picking Pete Buttigieg, a boring gay man, as a running mate was too risky, but not as risky as disavowing her infamous endorsement of taxpayer-funded sex changes for illegal immigrants. That was a noble display of "character" that "voters respect." She thinks Biden could only have picked her as vice president because she was the "most qualified and ready," then admits she chose Tim Walz because of his loyalty and lack of ambition. If she's still the most qualified, and the stakes for the country are so high, how will she explain her inevitable decision to leave politics for some comfy corporate board gig?

While plugging her book on The View last week, Harris claimed she had a "good relationship" with Biden and still speaks to the former president. No one believes that, but she said it anyway. The View was the site of one of Harris's most memorable gaffes during the campaign, when she said there was "not a thing that comes to mind" when asked what she would have done differently as president compared with Biden—she shrugs it off in the book. She even finds a way to blame Trump. To criticize Biden in any way, she writes, would have been "to embrace the cruelty of my opponent."

A half-competent politician would have instantly recognized that, as Harris campaign adviser David Plouffe told her bluntly, people "hate Joe Biden." Harris, a politician who struggles to perceive reality, writes: "Over the course of the 107 days, I became increasingly aware that people wanted to know there was a separation and that it was a big issue for them."

If only she'd had more time.

107 Days
by Kamala Harris
Simon & Schuster, 320 pp., $30