Harris's '107 Days' reveals candid, sometimes jarring account of campaign against Trump

WASHINGTON — Kamala Harris reveals in her forthcoming memoir that the 2024 campaign against Donald Trump stretched her and her team to a breaking point, and that some moments felt almost surreal in real time. In 107 Days, a chronicle built around the whirlwind of a fast-tracked bid after Joe Biden paused his reelection run, Harris recounts a private grief she says touched staffers after the loss and describes a campaign that often felt like a ticking time bomb rather than a steady march toward victory. The book, due for release Tuesday, is not pitched as a running attack or a policy volume; rather, it offers a raw, behind-the-scenes look at the choices, missteps and tensions that accompanied the sprint to Election Day.

Harris writes that she never questioned Biden’s ability to serve, at least not publicly. “If I believed that, I would have said so,” she asserts, while noting that Biden’s age became more evident as the campaign progressed. She writes that at eighty-one, Biden “got tired,” and that his inner circle should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far. Yet, she writes, the team kept pushing forward even as the strain became more visible. The moment Harris describes as pivotal came early on, during the debate with Trump in Atlanta. “As soon as he walked onto the debate stage in Atlanta, I could see he wasn't right,” she writes, and she says Biden’s team appeared to be in denial, supplying her with talking points that insisted “JOE BIDEN WON.” The passage underscores a campaign defined by friction, even as Harris praises the partnership with Biden in public remarks.

The book also chronicles the strain of late-stage campaigning when Biden considered dropping out, and the moment when he invited Harris to join him for a Fourth of July celebration at the White House. Jill Biden pulled Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, aside and asked what was going on, a conversation that carried implications for loyalty and strategy. Emhoff responded with anger in private, saying, “They have to ask if we’re loyal?” Harris writes. After she herself took the top of the ticket, preparing for her own debate against Trump, Biden phoned her in a nerve-wracking moment after hearing rumors that she had been speaking poorly about him, a report that underscored the fragile alliance behind the scenes. Harris says she found it difficult to parse why the call had come at that moment and insisted she was listening rather than contributing to a broader power struggle.

The memoir does not flinch from the mistakes she believes she made, including a widely cited misstep on The View. “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” she recalls telling a host when asked what she would have done differently than Biden during the prior four years. She characterizes the moment as a self-inflicted wound that gave opponents a talking point and frustrated staffers who felt she was boxed in by the president’s record. David Plouffe, then a senior adviser, reportedly told Harris bluntly that “people hate Joe Biden,” a reality she does not dispute but notes she preferred not to dissect publicly. The exchange, she writes, helped illuminate why her candidacy did not land with the broad electorate she had hoped to reach, and why her association with Biden appeared to hold back her own campaign.

Harris also details the weariness of internal debates about running mates and who could best serve as a partner on a ticket that still carried significant risks. She writes that Pete Buttigieg, then transportation secretary and a former Indiana mayor, was her first choice to be the running mate, but she found it “too big of a risk” to ask voters to accept a Black woman as president while also elevating a gay man to the second slot. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro was another option, but Harris harbored concerns that he would be unable to settle into a vice presidential role for an extended period, potentially straining the broader partnership. She ultimately settled on Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, yet even his performance in a debate against JD Vance left her shouting at the television and warning that “you’re not there to make friends with the guy who is attacking your running mate.” The book hints at a broader recurring theme: her fear that a running mate’s weaknesses could become a liability for the ticket as a whole.

Aside from the running-mate calculus, Harris offers a pointed, sometimes dryly humorous portrait of late-stage political life. There is only a single reference to California Governor Gavin Newsom in the book, noting that after Biden ended his reelection bid Harris reached out to Newsom, who texted, “Hiking. Will call back,” but never did. The memoir also reveals how a “Red File”—a collection of contingency plans assembled by Harris’s brother-in-law, Tony West, a former Justice Department official—became practical when the political landscape shifted and Biden finally announced he would step aside. West pressed forward with plans that Harris says she did not want to dwell on, ultimately deferring to him and other aides to carry those plans forward as circumstances dictated.

The timing of the endorsement from Biden remains a focal point in Harris’s account. She writes that Biden planned to wait a day before endorsing her as his successor—a timing that alarmed her and convinced her that an immediate show of support would strengthen her position. The endorsement came soon after Biden publicly said he was stepping away, a moment Harris frames as a rare convergence of personal loyalty and strategic necessity on a campaign she describes as emotionally draining and politically consequential. The book also recounts the unusual, almost surreal moments that defined the race, including a plan to prepare for her convention speech with a professional voice coach who wanted her to “emit animal noises.” Harris describes the team’s exercises—hums, grunts and trills—as part of a broader effort to translate strength and resilience into an audience-ready performance under intense pressure.

The narrative also includes a notable post-assassination-attack exchange with Trump. Despite a bruising run on the campaign trail, Trump reportedly flattered Harris during a call after the second assassination attempt against him, asking how to balance criticisms with persuasion. In her account, Harris reflects on Trump’s charisma and his ability to pivot in the moment, concluding that his charm is a calculated element of his political toolkit. “He’s a con man,” she writes, but one who is effective at turning a moment into an opportunity to shape perception. The juxtaposition of Trump’s rhetoric and Harris’s sense of what the campaign required underscores how the book presents a political environment that felt at once intimate and intensely public, with every conversation and decision subject to scrutiny from supporters, critics and opponents alike.

Harris’s book does not offer a blueprint for the next Democratic convention, nor does it outline future political aspirations. Instead, it provides a granular, sometimes painful accounting of a campaign that moved with unprecedented speed, exposing the fragile equilibrium between ambition, loyalty and accountability. By cataloging both the missteps and the moments of resolve, Harris presents a portrait of a leader navigating a treacherous political landscape while attempting to keep a sense of purpose, even when the path forward remained unclear. The publication of 107 Days is likely to shape discussions inside Democratic circles as the party contends with the possibility of future leadership contests, the challenge of uniting a diverse base, and the enduring question of how to balance generational change with continuity in a constantly shifting political terrain.