Former Vice President Kamala Harris’ return to the public eye has kicked off a new phase of the nascent 2028 presidential race.
In excerpts published ahead of the release of her new book, Harris outlined her internal thinking (and a few mea culpas) around key decisions and developments that vexed her 2024 presidential campaign. She also offered some blunt thoughts about a handful of other prominent Democrats, including up-and-comers who she considered to be her running mate, like former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.
Now, Harris’ book has opened up the first big moment of confrontation between potential 2028 rivals. Democrats are eager to skip ahead to their turn to attempt a political comeback in Washington after Harris' loss last year, even if it's still far from clear who wants to seek the nomination.
While potential candidates are traveling to different key states and building their profiles, Harris' memoir has them engaging with her — and sometimes criticizing her judgment — particularly early in a presidential campaign that could eventually see them squaring up against each other.
Harris' first excerpt, released in The Atlantic earlier this month, centers on then-President Joe Biden's decision to step aside amid the groundswell of pressure after his June debate performance — a topic that has sparked repeated recriminations among Democrats in the wake of November's disappointing showing at the ballot box.
The passage amounts to a lengthy Monday-morning quarterbacking of whether Harris should have told Biden not to run again.
"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," she wrote.
Democrats have lined up in the aftermath of 2024 to pan Biden's decision to run, and some have distanced themselves from not only the decision but Harris' role in it.
"She’s going to have to answer to how she was in the room and yet never said anything publicly," Shapiro said last week on a SiriusXM podcast hosted by sports commentator Stephen A. Smith.
And asked on NBC News' "Meet the Press" earlier this month about Biden, Buttigieg said he "should not have run, and if he had made that decision sooner, we might have been better off." He went on to stress that it was Biden's decision and that he "was not included in the process."
The Atlantic excerpt wasn't the only piece of Harris' book that provoked a response from top Democrats.
About her vice presidential selection process, Harris wrote that, while she "admired [Shapiro's] work" and that he was "great on the stump, a wonderful campaigner, very compelling and very bright," she worried that Shapiro would be "unable to settle for a role as No. 2 and that it would wear on our partnership."
During an interview Sunday on NBC News' "Meet the Press," Shapiro brushed the book aside, arguing that he spent last election year "focused on working my tail off to deny Donald Trump a second term."
Asked about her comments around Biden's decision to run, then not run, Shapiro replied, "She can explain what she means by that."
On Buttigieg, she wrote that he was her "first choice" as someone "well qualified in so many respects," and that "he would have been an ideal partner — if I were a straight white man."
Buttigieg responded to the book during an interview with Politico last week, saying he was "surprised."
“My experience in politics has been that the way that you earn trust with voters is based mostly on what they think you’re going to do for their lives, not on categories,” he said.
Harris elaborated in an interview on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” that while she potentially “was being too cautious,” she worried adding Buttigieg to the ticket would be too risky.
“In one of the most hotly contested elections for president of the United States — against someone like Donald Trump, who knows no floor — to be a Black woman running for president of the United States and as a vice presidential running mate a gay man, with the stakes being so high, it made me very sad, but I also realized it would be a real risk,” she said.
Harris also recounted notes from her calls with prominent Democrats upon the news that Biden was dropping out, writing that California Gov. Gavin Newsom had been hiking and she was told he'd call back. "He never did," she added.
Newsom told reporters last week he hadn't read the book and quibbled with that characterization — saying he missed a call while hiking from an unknown number that ended up being the former vice president and he quickly put out an endorsement supporting her candidacy.
Other prominent Democrats have weighed in about Harris' candidacy in recent days, too, like Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. He said this month at a fundraising dinner for Missouri Democrats, according to St. Louis Public Radio, that Trump won because "he convinced that last group of undecided voters that he was more focused on helping you pay for that next bill, while the vice president was distracted on a number of issues.”
A source close to the former vice president told NBC News that the book is “more of her recollection and her story” after being at the center of an unprecedented moment in American politics, one that’s also reflective of the fact that “Democrats are extremely lost in the wilderness right now.”
“If you read the book, she doesn’t pretend to have all the answers, or know all the problems, but she does make an attempt to diagnose some of our issues and prescribe some solutions,” they added.
During an interview Wednesday with ABC, Harris was asked if she was concerned the book could "burn bridges."
"No, that's not my intention and I hope not. If you're talking about the chatter about who I talk about, we have nothing but stars, as far as I'm concerned, in the party, and I talk glowingly about who they are and what they're contributing," she said.
"Part of the problem that we have right now in terms of the punditry is to suggest that we are waiting for a messiah and the savior and the saving message, instead of saying that we actually have a lot of stars who are doing very good work pushing back, but also talking about what we stand for," Harris continued.
Despite the responses by Democrats, including some who were invoked in the book, the source close to Harris said she “wrote his book without a single eye on 2028 at all, in terms of her own personal ambition.”
“If others are going to take it as a 2028 starting gun, that’s their prerogative," they added.
