Book Review: Kamala Harris on The Shortest Campaign

Kamala Harris’ new memoir 107 Days is captivating, both for what it tells us about the shortest presidential campaign in modern history and for what it doesn’t. It opens on July 21, 2024, the day Joe Biden called Harris to say he was withdrawing from the campaign and concludes with November 5, the day she lost.

In her postmortem, Harris revisits the campaign, countdown style. Each chapter covers one of those 107 days, some chapters covering several pages, others a mere paragraph and a few days skipped.

Throughout her narrative, Harris doggedly professes loyalty to Biden. Along with his staffers, she adopted the mantra that seeking a second term was “Joe and Jill’s decision.” While Harris doesn’t explicitly say Biden shouldn’t have tried for a second term, she acknowledges it was reckless to leave that decision to the Bidens alone.

After the president went on TV to announced he was dropping out, followed by his endorsement minutes later of Harris, the vice president spent her afternoon and evening on a whirlwind of calls – more than 100 – to party leaders. There were positive responses of help but a sole exception: California’s Gavin Newsom was “hiking” and “will call back.” He never did.

Harris enlisted aides and family in retrofitting Joe’s planned campaign. Once she secured the support of Party delegates, her next task was picking a running mate. Of eight names on the vetting list, she admits Pete Buttegieg was her first choice, but she says, “We were already asking the public to accept a Black woman married to a Jewish man.” She sadly concluded that adding a gay man would be too big a risk.

Her VP list was finally winnowed to three finalists – Gov. Josh Shapiro, Gov. Tim Walz, and Sen. Mark Kelly. Each was smuggled into her residence for hours-long interviews. Afterwards – with the help of a small selection committee – she made the decision to pick Walz. She liked him and knew he would have her back.

Between the unending appearances, speeches, and fundraisers as well as her official duties as vice president, Harris next turned to preparations for the convention in Chicago. She says she did 27 drafts of her convention speech, knowing it was her best chance to reintroduce herself to the American people. On the convention’s first night, 10,000  people gathered to hear her introduce Walz. Harris led with how he’d coached a losing high school football team that, in his first six weeks of coaching won the state championship. As she noted, “We rode the high of the crowd that night.” It seemed anything was possible.

On Day 56, Harris was about to take the debate stage when Joe Biden phoned. She assumed he was calling to give her a peptalk. Instead Biden asked about rumors that Harris was saying bad things about him. It wasn’t true and hardly what she needed to hear before facing Trump. Her husband Doug Emhoff advised her to “let it go.”

Bucked up by Doug, Harris stepped onto the stage letting her careful preparations take over. She was able to avoid being baited by Trump’s lies about Haitians eating pets and Democratic states putting newborns to death. Harris staffers later reported that when Trump’s plan landed for the debate, conspiracy theorist Laura Looomer had been traveling with him and might have been the source of bogus tales.

As expected, Trump attacked Harris on the Afghanistan withdrawal. But she reminded him that he himself had committed to an even earlier exit and had outrageously hosted the Taliban at Camp David. Harris, who sometimes has a salty mouth, barely resisted calling Trump an obscene epithet (MF for short).

In the dwindling days of the 107-day campaign, the polls varied from a virtual dead heat — closest race ever — to a slight advantage for Harris. Her campaign prepared for an imagined win after a long election night. But it was not to be. Harris was still watching and waiting, fighting off hints of alarm when her campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon (nicknamed JOD) called to say, “I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t think you’re going to get there.”

Barely able to breathe, Harris blurted, “Oh my god, my god. What’s going to happen to our country?” Fighting through denial and bargaining stages of grief, she nevertheless gave her concession speech at Howard University. Then she called Trump to concede and promise a peaceful transition – the call Trump never made to Joe Biden in 2020.

In the book’s Afterward, Harris brands tariffs “a tax on everyday Americans” and calls Project 2025 the blueprint for Trump’s second term. She deplores the destruction of scientific research and the Justice Department going after Trump’s enemies list.

Finally, she asks: What should we do? She offers only vague answers, saying that Gen Z is at the heart of her vision for the future. She wants to invest: housing-downpayment assistance, increased child tax credit, Medicare helping provide home care for elderly, and people in Africa still having access to AIDS medication.

In 107 Days, Harris confesses regrets. She asks herself why she didn’t punch back harder on transgender rights. She also revisits an interview on “The View” when she was asked how she differed from the president. Out of loyalty to Biden, she answered that she wouldn’t have done anything differently. She now figures that too was a mistake.

The best moment of the book, written with help from Pulitzer award-winning author Geraldine Brooks, are when Harris tells you what she saw and what she thinks. She quotes her husband’s early summary: “They hide you away for four years, give you impossible shit jobs, don’t correct the record when those tasks are mischaracterized, never fight back when you are attacked, never praise your accomplishments and now, finally, they want you on that balcony, standing right beside them.”

All this begs the question: Will she run again in 2028? During her multi-city book tour, she has so far ducked that question, politician-style. But there are clues. Her fast-produced book has two main messages: She underscores her loyalty to Biden and avoids burning bridges and bruising most egos. She concludes her narrative with Nov. 6, the day after 107 Days, with a vow: “As hurt and traumatized as we felt, we would not retreat from the fight. It might take a while. But the fight for our country in always worth it. And we will win.”

Harris is now embarked on the tour to sell her book in 20 U.S. cities and Canada. It’s a natural for someone seeking to stay in the public eye. With the book she has given herself an excuse for losing: 107 days were not enough.