Harris Slams Biden: ‘Recklessness Fueled by Ego’

Kamala Harris is about to begin her book tour with the launch of  107 Days, the amount of time between the announcement of her campaign for president and Election Day. A portion was published in The Atlantic late last night, and it contains some “interesting” if not jaw-dropping accusations-revelations. Let’s go straight to the passage and then analyze what it all really means.

“‘It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized,”

“Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness. 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.”

“At 81, Joe got tired. That’s when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles.”

“I don’t think it’s any surprise that the debate debacle happened right after two back-to-back trips to Europe and a flight to the West Coast for 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.”

“Of all the people in the White House, I was in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out. I knew it would come off to him as incredibly self-serving if I advised him not to run. He would see it as naked ambition, perhaps as poisonous disloyalty, even if my only message was: Don’t let the other guy win.”

Alright. Well, as someone who wrote that Joe needed to announce that he would not be running for president again right after the 2022 mid-terms (And, for the only time in my career, was told that I couldn’t write such a thing, as an editor at a much, much larger site), it is somewhat tricky to disagree with her. I strongly believed it in November of 2022 and strongly believed it going into the 2024 campaign. But it wasn’t until the terrible debate in May of 2024 that I lost hope for Biden.

Meanwhile, Harris comes off in this passage – we don’t know what she says in other parts of the book, as someone who is laying blame at the wrong feet. Because Harris “won” the Democratic nomination without so much as a week’s fight, and that put her in the ultimate position. The nomination could just as easily have gone to the convention, where candidates used to be nominated without a full primary, and she could just as easily have been on the outside looking in. That being said, her campaign suffered terribly from not having to learn all the lessons to be learned on the primary campaign trail so as not to repeat certain mistakes going into November.

In that sense, it actually was Joe and Jill’s decision, and Harris benefited from not having to go through the primaries – a huge advantage. But had Joe done super well in the debate against Trump and proven that he was more than sharp enough to take Trump down, he might have won. We will never know just how much misogyny played into Harris’s loss. We only know that it damn well played some.

As for getting tired by the schedule and thus sounding more than a bit off, much more so than really being off, that much I believe fully. I never doubted that Joe totally retained enough wisdom and heart to more than make up for any loss as to razor sharpness. Experience is vital, and no one had more than Joe. It turns out, with his cancer diagnosis, that he wouldn’t have been able to serve a full term anyway. He should have announced right after the 2022 election, but he probably felt better back then. It is very tough to know, only that he had no choice after the terrible debate.

Could Pete Buttigieg or Gavin Newsom have won if they had gone through a primary? We will never know. They wouldn’t have had to deal with the misogyny. But they would still have had to get through the accusations of inflation that had largely abated post-COVID. Speaking of Covid, this country’s stupidity kept it from realizing just how effective, almost magical, in pulling out of the nightmare. If only everyone had been vaccinated. It was only because too many politically-stoned citizens refused the “Trump Vaccine” (As Kayleigh called it) that Covid went on long enough to ensure that some of us vaccinated folks got Delta and went through ten days of hell, but none short of breath. Thanks, vaccine.) He never got the credit he should have gotten, which might have been enough to put him over the top. The Biden administration alone pulled the country out and did so with incredible competence.

Meanwhile, people were upset about immigration, and Harris had done too little to publicize what she had done to abate it as immigration czar. The Biden administration deported more “bad” immigrants (with criminal records, caught coming across) than the Trump administration. But they did it quietly, and Harris never got out in front of it. There is also the fact that so many in this country are nativist racists who want to lash out anyway – a guarantee with Donald Trump. It is hard to know.

What is not hard to know, and what might be in other parts of the book, is that it was only Harris who lost the election after being very fortunate in getting the nomination without a fight. Perhaps no Democrat could have won (I find that most likely). But she oversaw the campaign and, ultimately, just like with a victory, is the final one to take the blame. I am sure that she accepts more of it in other parts of the book. For now, it is a little hard to hear that it was ego that drove the decision to run again. Though I disagreed with it vehemently, the time to drop out had long since passed, and it took the debate to really highlight that he just didn’t have the ability to stand up and land blows. It doesn’t seem like ego so much as conviction that he was better placed to win than anyone else. Up and until the debate, he might have been.

We can be sure that Harris lost. There might have been no scenario by which she could win. But her campaign continued to stumble on some things that might have been worked out in the primary. She did great in debates with Trump, usually getting a bump. But she was haunted by Covid inflation and immigration, and there was precious little she could’ve done about any of it. Even though it would’ve been nearly impossible to win, it will be better to hear portions where she alone takes the loss.

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