Former Vice President Kamala Harris has thrown open the doors to her tumultuous 2024 presidential campaign in her new memoir, 107 Days, offering a rare, unfiltered look at the high-stakes decisions, personal reflections, and party tensions that shaped a historic—if ultimately unsuccessful—run for the White House. As Harris embarks on a media tour to promote her book, Democratic Party insiders are grappling with the fallout from her candid revelations, sparking a fresh round of soul-searching and debate about the direction of the party and its leadership.
In 107 Days, Harris spares few details as she recounts the pivotal moments of her campaign. One of the most talked-about chapters centers on the October 1, 2024, vice presidential debate, where her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, faced off against Republican JD Vance. Harris had hoped Walz would serve as the campaign’s “closer,” especially since she would not have another chance to debate former President Donald Trump. But as the debate unfolded, Harris found herself dismayed by Walz’s performance. “When Tim fell for it and started nodding and smiling at J.D.’s fake bipartisanship, I moaned to Doug, ‘What is happening?’” she wrote, referencing her husband, Doug Emhoff, and her frustration with Walz’s attempt at civility in the face of sharp attacks.
Harris’s disappointment was compounded when Walz, pressed by the moderator about his claim to have been in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests, stumbled. Instead of simply admitting he’d mixed up the dates—he had not yet left the United States at the time—Walz awkwardly shifted the conversation to “biking in Nebraska.” The moment, lampooned in a subsequent Saturday Night Live skit, left Harris wincing. “It was otherwise uncanny in its portrait of our evening,” she admitted, though she clarified that she did not actually spit out wine in shock, as the skit depicted.
Despite the public scrutiny, Harris reassured Walz that the debate would not decide the election. “I reassured him that the election would not be won or lost on account of that debate, and in fact it had a negligible effect on our polling,” she wrote. Still, she acknowledged the emotional toll the campaign took on Walz and his family, noting that “the family that is your source of strength can become your weakness in a presidential campaign.” Encouraging resilience, Harris reflected on the advice she once received as a young district attorney: “Baby, you be sure and don’t make it look too easy. The higher you rise in the political food chain, the harder it gets. This is not a genteel profession. You must be ready to brawl.”
The decision to select Walz as her running mate was not made lightly. Harris revealed a process that involved input from her senior staff, her godson, and close family members. Other contenders included Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Ultimately, Harris made her final decision in a moment of domestic normalcy, seasoning a pork roast in her kitchen. “Doug and I went back and forth,” she wrote. “It was always going to have to be my decision. By the time I went to bed, I’d decided on Walz.”
But the memoir’s most controversial passages may be those that address Harris’s internal deliberations about the makeup of her ticket and the broader state of the Democratic Party. In a revealing segment, Harris explained why she chose not to select Buttigieg, a gay man, as her running mate. “But we were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man. Part of me wanted to say, ‘Screw it, let’s just do it.’ But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk.” Speaking with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Harris elaborated, “I think America is and would be ready for that, but when I had to make that decision with two weeks to go, you know, maybe I was being too cautious … but that’s the decision I made.” Buttigieg himself told POLITICO that he found Harris’s comments “surprising” and that he believes in “giving Americans more credit.”
Harris’s reflections on President Joe Biden’s re-election bid have also stirred the pot. In both her book and interviews, she admitted regret over not confronting Biden about his age and fitness to run again. On Good Morning America, she confessed, “Was that grace to not bring it up to him or was it reckless, and on my part, I do reflect on that and feel that it was. There was a recklessness about not raising it with him.” Ultimately, Biden dropped out and endorsed Harris, but the episode has fueled debate about whether Harris was too loyal or not assertive enough in a moment that demanded leadership.
The reception to 107 Days has been mixed, to say the least. According to POLITICO, some Democratic strategists and party insiders have described the book as “divisive” and “embarrassing,” with one adviser to a potential 2028 candidate calling it “a gossip book that prioritizes the pettiness of her politics.” Michael Hardaway, a former adviser to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, lamented, “This book seems to be unhelpful and divisive in a way that makes it hard for her to be the face of the party as we look to the future.” Others, like David Axelrod, questioned the political wisdom of Harris’s strategy, while Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro pointedly remarked that Harris “is going to have to answer to how she was in the room and yet never said anything publicly.”
Yet Harris is not without supporters. Mike Nellis, a strategist who worked on her 2020 campaign, praised her willingness to “speak her truth,” even if it made some uncomfortable. “I think if we had had more difficult conversations as a party over the last couple of years, we would’ve been in a much stronger position to win the election last year,” Nellis told POLITICO.
As for Harris herself, she maintains that her book is not a “burn the boats” exit from politics. When asked about future ambitions, she demurred: “I’m not focused on that right now, I’m really not.” Instead, she has used her platform to urge Democrats to “play fire with fire” in response to Republican gerrymandering, signaling that she still sees herself as an active voice in the party’s ongoing battles.
With 107 Days, Kamala Harris has reignited debate within her party, exposing old wounds and new anxieties about leadership, strategy, and identity. Whether her frankness will ultimately help or hinder her political future—and that of her party—remains to be seen, but her memoir has ensured that these conversations are far from over.
