Kamala Harris’s new memoir, 107 Days, has landed like a political thunderclap. Published September 23, 2025, by Simon & Schuster, the book chronicles her short-lived presidential campaign against Donald Trump after Joe Biden’s withdrawal. But more than just a campaign diary, it reads as a reckoning—an unfiltered airing of grievances about Biden, his inner circle, and the broader Democratic Party.
Anger at Biden: “Recklessness” and Betrayal
Harris spares no words in describing her anger and disappointment with Joe Biden. She calls his decision to delay dropping out of the 2024 race an act of “recklessness,” arguing that it left her with too little time—just 107 days—to build a campaign that could compete with Trump.
She accuses Biden’s team of undercutting her directly by feeding or tolerating negative stories about her office being “chaotic” or suffering from staff turnover. In her telling, Biden’s aides adopted a zero-sum mentality: “If she’s shining, he’s dimmed.”
Harris even recounts a tense phone call before a major debate, where Biden accused her of bad-mouthing him to party powerbrokers. She describes the timing as “bewildering and destabilizing”—a needless confrontation at a critical moment.
On foreign policy, Harris condemns Biden’s lack of empathy for Palestinians during the Gaza war, contrasting it with his highly visible support for Ukraine. “It wasn’t just about foreign policy,” she writes. “It was about whether our values were real or rhetorical.”
Democratic Leadership: Loyalty Demanded, Support Withheld
Harris also takes aim at the wider Democratic establishment. She claims that party insiders treated her candidacy as “Biden’s leftovers” instead of rallying behind her as a serious contender.
She writes that Barack Obama withheld his full endorsement until too late, framing his support as more symbolic than strategic. She argues that Democratic leaders—including those in Congress—were more concerned with preserving their own standing than backing her with real political capital.
Harris singles out the overwhelming influence of pro-Israel voices within the party, saying they pressured her to soften her critiques of U.S. policy in Gaza. To her, this was another example of how Democrats demanded silence on issues of principle in exchange for party unity.
The Pete Buttigieg Decision
Perhaps the most headline-grabbing admission is her revelation that Pete Buttigieg was her first choice for vice president. She describes him as “an ideal partner,” but ultimately judged the ticket too risky:
“He would have been an ideal partner—if I were a straight white man.”
Harris reasoned that a ticket combining a Black woman and an openly gay man might be too much for voters to accept with only 107 days to campaign. She admits that part of her wanted to “just do it,” but she ultimately chose caution, describing the decision as one made with “mutual sadness.”
Her comments triggered backlash, prompting Harris to clarify in interviews that she did not reject Buttigieg because of his sexuality, but because of the high stakes and short timeline. Still, Buttigieg expressed surprise, saying the issue had never come up in their private conversations.
Missteps, Grief, and the Human Cost
Harris does not deny her own missteps. She points to her disastrous appearance on The View, where she said she “couldn’t think of anything” that separated her from Biden, as a turning point that weakened her candidacy.
She describes the loss as “traumatic,” comparing it to the grief she felt after her mother’s death. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, emerges as a quiet protector, shielding her from internal polling that showed the campaign collapsing.
Reception: Finger-Pointing or Truth-Telling?
Reaction to 107 Days has been sharply divided. Some praise Harris’s candor in exposing the dysfunction within Democratic leadership. Others accuse her of deflecting blame and deepening party fractures. Commentators like Stephen A. Smith dismissed the memoir entirely, sneering: “Who cares?”
But regardless of whether it rehabilitates her image or worsens perceptions, the book leaves no doubt: Harris believes her campaign was undermined as much by her own party as by Trump. In her eyes, Biden’s recklessness, party insiders’ disloyalty, and the crushing weight of political calculation combined to doom her historic candidacy.
