Kamala Harris says 'recklessness' drove silence on Biden in 2024 campaign: Highlights
WASHINGTON − Kamala Harris refused to tell Joe Biden he should not run for reelection − and now admits it was a colossal mistake.
In her memoir, “107 Days,” Harris says it was “recklessness” that drove so many people around Biden to defer to the aging president and his wife.
“'It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.' We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized," Harris writes.
Kamala Harris, the first woman, first Black, and first Asian-American Vice President, began her political journey in California. Look back at her career, including here, where Harris delivers a keynote address during the Emerge 20th Anniversary Gala at the Palace Hotel on April 30, 2025 in San Francisco, California. Harris delivered her first public speech since leaving office in January.
"Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness,” Harris writes. “The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision.”
The passage appears in an excerpt of Harris’ forthcoming book, which she shared with The Atlantic ahead of its Sept. 23 release. In the chapter, the former Democratic nominee rebukes Biden’s team for the way she was treated as vice president – before and after Biden dropped out of the 2024 campaign.
The book is Harris' account of her breakneck and ultimately failed campaign for the White House after Biden dropped out in July 2024, leaving his vice president just 107 days to win over voters.
Harris, whose public image suffered during her vice presidency, accuses Biden’s staff of “adding fuel to negative narratives that sprang up around me,” as she toiled away, continually seeking to demonstrate her loyalty.
She had battled Biden for the nomination in the 2020 race and was never fully accepted by his inner circle, Harris indicates.
“Because I’d gone after him over busing in the 2019 primary debate, I came into the White House with what we lawyers call a ‘rebuttable presumption.’ I had to prove my loyalty, time and time again,” she writes.
The dynamic contributed to her unwillingness to confront Biden, who was 81 at the time, about his reelection bid, Harris suggests. Although, she does come to his defense over allegations involving his mental fitness.
More: Is Dubai Harris the Kamala everyone has been waiting for? Will she convince doubters?
“On his worst day, he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best. But at 81, Joe got tired. That’s when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles,” Harris says.
But she also says she bought into claims that Biden had faced hardship throughout his career and defeated the odds time and time again.
“It was just possible he was right about this, too,” Harris said.
Why Harris stayed silent
Harris says she did not tell Biden he should quit the presidential race, because she feared it would come off “as incredibly self-serving.”
“I was in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out,” she wrote. “He would see it as naked ambition, perhaps as poisonous disloyalty, even if my only message was: Don’t let the other guy win.”
Harris indicates she resisted pressure during her campaign to distance herself from Biden for the same reason.
But, she says, if she thought Biden was unfit to serve, she would have spoken up.
More: Burdened by what had been: Kamala Harris couldn’t convince voters
“Many people want to spin up a narrative of some big conspiracy at the White House to hide Joe Biden’s infirmity. Here is the truth as I lived it. Joe Biden was a smart guy with long experience and deep conviction, able to discharge the duties of president.”
She chalks up Biden’s appalling June 2024 debate performance against Trump to exhaustion after jet-setting to Europe for a Group of Seven Summit and a D-Day Commemoration, followed by a Hollywood fundraiser.
“I don’t believe it was incapacity. If I believed that, I would have said so. As loyal as I am to President Biden, I am more loyal to my country,” Harris writes.
One directional loyalty
For all the loyalty Harris says showed Biden, she says it was not offered in return. At least not from his team, who she repeatedly points the finger at, while providing some cover to her former boss.
“When Fox News attacked me on everything from my laugh, to my tone of voice, to whom I’d dated in my 20s, or claimed I was a 'DEI hire,' the White House rarely pushed back with my actual résumé,” she writes.
Harris was elected San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general before winning a U.S. Senate seat.
She said her chief of staff, Loraine Voles, had to constantly advocate for her to provide any remarks at all at White House events – including a simple, 2-minute introduction of the president.
“Worse, I often learned that the president’s staff was adding fuel to negative narratives that sprang up around me,” she said, rebutting claims she had “unusually high staff turnover” her first year in office.
Another example, she said, were GOP efforts to cast her as the “border czar” when she was put in charge of addressing the root causes of migration – a tough assignment on its own that was damaging to her image.
“And when the stories were unfair or inaccurate, the president’s inner circle seemed fine with it. Indeed, it seemed as if they decided I should be knocked down a little bit more,” she wrote.
Why Harris believes she was shunned
Beyond their clash in the 2020 Democratic primary for president, Harris says Biden’s team was worried she’d overshadow the president.
“Their thinking was zero-sum: If she’s shining, he’s dimmed. None of them grasped that if I did well, he did well,” she said.
Because of the concerns around Biden’s age, Harris says her “visible success” was “vital” to how the administration was viewed by public.
“It would serve as a testament to his judgment in choosing me and reassurance that if something happened, the country was in good hands. My success was important for him,” she writes.
More: Democrats want to fix Kamala Harris' image problem. Some VP allies fear it’s too late.
“His team didn’t get it.”
When polls did show her image improving, Harris says the people around Biden “didn’t like the contrast that was emerging.”
Her sharp remarks on Israel’s assault on Hamas in Gaza, in response to the militant group’s Oct. 7 attack, and the high death toll among Palestinian civilians was an example.
She chastised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government during a speech in Selma, Alabama, on March 3, 2024, that she says was vetted and approved by Biden’s national security team.
“It went viral, and the West Wing was displeased. I was castigated for, apparently, delivering it too well,” she said.
Even when she did something right – like lead the successful midterm messaging push around abortion rights – Harris suggests she did not receive appropriate credit.
“Here was a huge issue on which the president was not seeking to lead. Joe struggled to talk about reproductive rights in a way that met the gravity of the moment,” she said.
It was her work on the issue that “upended the narrative that we were doomed to a shellacking in the midterms” and propelled Democrats to lose fewer seats than expected in the House and retain control of the Senate.
Biden bears some blame
One of the few other jabs that Harris takes at Biden himself is tied to the address he gave to the country on July 24, 2024, explaining his decision to drop out of the presidential race days before.
Harris was on a trip to Indiana at the time on a previously planned trip to deliver remarks to a Black sorority.
“I watched it at the hotel that night. It was a good speech, drawing on the history of the presidency to locate his own place within it. But as my staff later pointed out, it was almost nine minutes into the 11-minute address before he mentioned me,” she said.
And when he did, he spent two sentences thanking her and touting her credentials.
“And that was it,” she said, pointedly.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Harris says 'recklessness' drove silence on Biden reelection bid
