The first excerpts from former Vice President Kamala Harris' new book are out, and she doesn't hold back. In a somewhat surprising decision, she openly rips former President Joe Biden, his wife Jill Biden, and the entire White House team over a variety of grievances, staking out a newly hostile tone as the twice-failed presidential candidate tries to set up yet another run in 2028.
As we walk through these, you'll see that everyone goes under the bus to excuse her failures, beginning with Harris slamming Joe Biden's "ego" for his running again and calling it "reckless." She also mentions Jill Biden as being part of the decision, providing yet more evidence of no love lost between the two.
And 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.
“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. It should have been more than a personal decision.
Of course, the faulty logic there is that Harris was somehow destined to win, or even more capable of winning, had Biden stepped aside early and given her the full campaign cycle. For one, she would have actually had to go through a contentious primary, and remember that in mid-2023, Harris was largely perceived as a big problem within the administration, not an asset. It wasn't until mid-2024 that her reputation was rehabbed because Democrats and the mainstream press had no choice.
Still, even assuming she'd have secured the nomination, the idea that seeing more of Harris would have catapulted her to victory remains a laughable assertion. Time and again, the former vice president has shown that she can't handle the national stage and that her appeal drops the more she's in the limelight.
In that context, her next complaint becomes more laughable.
When Fox News attacked me 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,” the White House rarely pushed back with my actual résumé: two terms elected D.A., top cop in the second-largest department of justice in the United States, senator representing one in eight Americans.
Lorraine Voles, my chief of staff, constantly had to advocate for my role at events: “She’s not going to stand there like a potted plant. Give her two minutes of remarks. Have her introduce the president.”
They had a huge comms team; they had Karine Jean-Pierre briefing in the pressroom every day. But getting anything positive said about my work or any defense against untrue attacks was almost impossible.
The problem with Harris wasn't a lack of two-minute introductions at events, or that the comms team didn't spend most of its time singing her praises. The problem was Harris. She had always been an unlikable, inauthentic politician who only got to where she is through a series of questionable connections, corrupt dealings, and the fact that California is a deep blue state.
Harris' accusations don't just stop at a perceived lack of proactiveness in defending her, though. She goes on to claim Biden and his team were actively trying to harm her.
Worse, I often learned that the president’s staff was adding fuel to negative narratives that sprang up around me.
The plain fact is many people who come to work with a new administration in the White House haven’t done it before. It’s a job unlike any other, and not every person, no matter how talented in their former position, can step up into such a high-stress, round-the-clock role. Others find they just don’t want a job that doesn’t pay particularly well, takes a massive toll on family, and rules out anything resembling a normal life. I’m not going to keep people on who can’t thrive in their jobs—it’s not fair to them and it’s not good for the country.
So the first year in any White House sees staff churn. Working for the first woman vice president, my staff had the additional challenge of confronting gendered stereotypes, a constant battle that could prove exhausting.
Gendered stereotypes? The only reason Harris got the position was because she was a black woman, a fact that no one really denies at this point. She also enjoyed lavish praise, far more than any past vice president, from the mainstream press throughout her tenure. Yet, she's painting herself as a victim. It's astonishing.
I was the first vice president to have a dedicated press pool tracking my every public move. Before me, vice presidents had what’s called a “supplemental pool,” as the first lady does, covering important events. Because of this constant attention, things that had never been especially newsworthy about the vice president were suddenly reported and scrutinized.
And when the stories were unfair or inaccurate, the president’s inner circle seemed fine with it. Indeed, it seemed as if they decided I should be knocked down a little bit more.
There's nothing ambiguous about that. Harris point-blank accuses the White House of trying to sabotage her, and perhaps she's right on some level. There's no doubt that animosity existed between Harris and Biden and that it extended to their teams. There's also no doubt that many in the White House, including Jill Biden, held a large grudge after the former vice president accused Joe Biden, her then-primary opponent, of racism.
Later, Harris said that she was chastised for delivering a speech too well, claiming that sheer awesomeness represented a threat to Joe Biden.
I reiterated my strong support for Israel’s security and called on Hamas to release the hostages and accept the cease-fire agreement then on the table. I also called on Israel for greater access to aid. It was a speech that had been vetted and approved by the White House and the National Security Council. It went viral, and the West Wing was displeased. I was castigated for, apparently, delivering it too well.
Their thinking was zero-sum: If she’s shining, he’s dimmed. 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.
Regardless, I'd maintain there were no good guys here. Again, Harris' biggest issue was always herself, including the laziness that marked so much of her term as vice president. That was an issue I had noted before the 2024 election, and it turned out to be prescient.
SEE: Kamala Harris Has a Laziness Problem
In the end, every excerpt is a dodge of Harris' own culpability in her downfall. She was handed a billion dollars, surging polling, and universal praise from both the legacy press and pop culture, and she still lost. That's not a dynamic that would have changed had she just been able to "reintroduce" herself for the umpteenth time with a longer presidential campaign.
Harris doesn't believe that, though. She's obviously setting up a 2028 run by trying to pass the buck on her 2024 faceplant. Will that work? Given the Democratic Party's renewed obsession with intersectionality, it just might.
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