Even before her memoir hit bookstore shelves, former Vice President Kamala Harris’ account of her abbreviated presidential run burned a lot of bridges.
The book, “107 Days,” is Harris’ account of the 15 weeks she spent on the campaign trail in a failed run for the White House, and it is rife with criticism.
It is critical of prominent Democrats, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and even former President Joe Biden. She shares so much criticism that some political strategists thought maybe the book was her swansong from politics.
Harris has since been downplaying the criticism and trying to turn the attention away from those squabbles with the members of her own party.
What she’s been trying to do instead is turn the focus squarely on the man who beat her in the 2024 election, President Donald Trump.
In fact, that’s why she says she wrote the book, to remind people there’s someone in the White House who made promises -- and these are her words from a recent interview -- “that were either about what would aggrandize and help him mete out his vengeance, or about lies he told to the American people that he obviously never intended to keep.”
Regardless of that intention, the book left members of her own party angry and a bit baffled. It’s even been characterized by some as an ambush.
Strategically, who knows what it was meant to accomplish?
David Axelrod, former President Barack Obama’s senior advisor, put it this way in an article in Politico: “If there’s a political strategy here, it’s a bad one. There’s an awful lot of grievances and finger-pointing that really doesn’t serve a political agenda.”
So, let’s get back to the book. There are some interesting takeaways.
Apparently, a deep fracture existed in the partnership between Biden and Harris. To hear Harris tell it, there were perceived slights and mistrust.
She talks about something that happened on July 4 in the memoir and recounts calls for Biden to withdraw starting to mount.
The president’s wife pulled Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, aside and asked, “Are you supporting us?” The question provoked a furious outburst from Emhoff later in private. “They hide you away for four years,” he vented. “And still, they have to ask if we’re loyal?”
There’s another chapter where, as Harris tells it, she received a call from Biden hours before she was set to debate Trump in a pivotal moment in her own campaign. She said Biden asked her to “rewrite the history of his own disastrous debate.”
Without mincing words in “107 Days,” Harris also says it was reckless for Biden to run for a second term. Harris says he was in denial about it and so was his inner circle.
Some other interesting takeaways include the fact that Tim Walz, Minnesota’s governor, was not Harris’ first choice to be her running mate. Nope!
Harris wanted former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. She called him the ideal partner.
What got in the way? She concluded that asking the U.S. electorate to accept a ticket featuring a Black woman and a gay man was simply “too big of a risk.”
Oh, Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s governor, was also under consideration. She thought he was “poised, polished and personable.”
What happened there? “Nagging concern that he would be unable to settle for a role as No. 2.” (Translation: She thought he was too ambitious.)
So, in the end, she settled for Walz, and she got frustrated and thought he fumbled the ball a few too many times during the campaign.
There are other things in the book that Harris is very candid about that provide interesting insights, like the “hand grenade” moment on The View and some other bizarre moments on the campaign trail, including two assassination attempts against Trump, who, interestingly enough, she calls disarmingly flattering in private.
Candidly, she is not as kind to J.D. Vance. She refers to the vice president as a shape-shifter.
So, we have to wonder, what is the political strategy here? What was Harris’ intent? You have to believe the Democrats really do NOT want to reopen some of the cans of worms that appear to be opening here.
Is Harris snubbing her nose at politics? Members of her inner circle say no way. Uh...... then you don’t burn these bridges, right?!
Political analyst Daniel Cronrath joins me to analyze the book -- and what’s next for Harris -- on this week’s episode of Politics & Power. Watch at 7 p.m. or 9 p.m. on News4JAX+. Or catch it any time on demand on News4JAX.com, News4JAX+ or our YouTube channel.