WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Kamala Harris opened up about former President Joe Biden's decision to seek re-election in her forthcoming campaign memoir, writing that deferring to the Bidens to make the decision on their own was "recklessness."
"'It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.' We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized," Harris said.
"Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness," she continued. "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. It should have been more than a personal decision."
The comments in Harris' upcoming book, "107 Days," are her harshest criticism of the Bidens' circle yet, laying bare divisions in the White House and grappling with Biden's decision to seek a second term despite widespread concerns over his age.
"During all those months of growing panic, should I have told Joe to consider not running?" she wrote. "Perhaps."
Biden's personal office declined to comment on the excerpt, which was published by The Atlantic.
Before Biden ultimately dropped out of the race, Harris wrote, she believed that he would view her advising him to exit "as naked ambition, perhaps as poisonous disloyalty." She also addressed his age, which polling indicated was a major liability, saying that "at 81, Joe got tired. That’s when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles.”
"I don’t believe it was incapacity," she added. "If I believed that, I would have said so. As loyal as I am to President Biden, I am more loyal to my country.”
Age was a major political vulnerability for Biden even before his widely panned debate performance, which ultimately led a slew of Democrats to call on him to exit the race.
An NBC News poll conducted in January 2024 indicated that 76% of registered voters had major or moderate concerns that Biden did not have the necessary mental or physical health for a second term.
Harris also laid out several instances in which, she argued, Biden's circle undermined her efforts or did not sufficiently support her.
She pointed to "constant attention" to her vice presidency from journalists and criticized what she said was the White House's reluctance to counter negative coverage.
"And when the stories were unfair or inaccurate, the president’s inner circle seemed fine with it," she wrote. "Indeed, it seemed as if they decided I should be knocked down a little bit more."
That included the issue of immigration and border security, on which President Donald Trump enjoyed a 35-point advantage over Biden in the same NBC News poll. As part of her portfolio, Biden tasked Harris with leading efforts to stem migration to the United States across the southern border — a thorny political task for which she received much criticism from the right.
“When Republicans mischaracterized my role as 'border czar,' no one in the White House comms team helped me to effectively push back and explain what I had really been tasked to do, nor to highlight any of the progress I had achieved," she wrote.
Harris also criticized the White House for not having defended her in other ways, writing that Biden's team "rarely pushed back with my actual résumé" when conservative media attacked her "on everything from my laugh, to my tone of voice, to whom I’d dated in my 20s, or claimed I was a 'DEI hire.'"
Harris claimed she "often learned that the president’s staff was adding fuel to negative narratives that sprang up around me."
While the White House had a large communications team, Harris said, "getting anything positive said about my work or any defense against untrue attacks was almost impossible."
She also criticized what she argued was the West Wing's "zero-sum" thinking.
"If she’s shining, he’s dimmed," she said, referring to what she said was Biden's circle's attitude toward her. "None of them grasped that if I did well, he did well. That given the concerns about his age, my visible success as his vice president was vital. It would serve as a testament to his judgment in choosing me and reassurance that if something happened, the country was in good hands."
"My success was important for him," she concluded. "His team didn’t get it."
Asked for a response to what Harris wrote, former Biden White House spokesperson Andrew Bates pointed to Democrats’ winning a series of recent elections after the presidential race, arguing it was "because we’re making an effective case against Trump’s cost-raising agenda and chaos."
"And I’m proud to have worked for an administration led by two people who are not in the Epstein files," he added, referring to Trump's previous friendship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The aftermath of the election initiated a national conversation about Biden's age and mental acuity and transparency in politics. After Biden dropped out of the presidential race in July of that year, Harris ultimately failed to win any battleground states.
She announced her new memoir about her monthslong campaign in July. The book is set to be released this month.
