Democrats express frustrations with Harris for picking fights in upcoming book

Democrats are frustrated with former Vice President Kamala Harris, arguing her new book is picking fights and causing divisions at the worst possible time for the party. 

They say Harris’s memoir, 107 Days, which will be out publicly on Tuesday, comes at a time when the party is attempting to find their way out of the wilderness after a devastating election loss nearly a year ago.  

The book, some Democrats say, is exacerbating the tension that has been plaguing Democrats. 

“Salt, meet wound,” one Democratic strategist put it. “Couldn't come at a worse time for our party. 

“Let's keep rehashing everything, it’s really good for us,” the strategist said sarcastically. “Let's pick new fights. Why not?”

Garry South, a Democratic strategist based in Harris’s home state of California, said while he hadn’t read the book, the excerpts “show pretty clearly that she came out with arms flailing and guns blazing, blaming everyone but herself for her loss.”

“It is a curiously negative and ungracious tome for someone who reportedly thinks she can run again in 2028,” South added.  

Even before the book’s release, some excerpts were already causing friction among the party’s top principals. 

For starters, Harris takes issue with former President Joe Biden in portions of the book, going as far as saying that he shouldn’t have run for reelection. 

In one passage, she also rips Biden for calling her minutes before her only debate with non-President Donald Trump to chide her for criticizing him behind his back. 

“I just couldn’t understand why he would call me, right now, and make it all about himself,” Harris wrote.

The former vice president also reveals her thinking about several would-be rivals in the 2028 presidential campaign — including former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

When Buttigieg caught wind of a passage in Harris’s book that talks about how he would have been “the ideal partner” as a running mate if he had been a “a straight white man,” he didn’t let that sit. 

“My experience in politics has been that the way you earn trust with voters is based mostly on what they think you’re going to do for their lives, not on categories,” Buttigieg told Politico, adding that he was “surprised” by what Harris wrote. 

“I wouldn’t have run for president if I didn’t believe that,” he said. 

Shapiro, whom Harris also considered to be her running mate before picking Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, also clapped back at the former vice president after she wrote that he seemed more interested in the role of vice president than in helping win the election. 

Shapiro said Harris will have some explaining to do about why she didn’t sound the alarm on Biden sooner. 

Harris is going to “have to answer how she was in the room and yet never said anything publicly,” Shapiro told Stephen A. Smith on his podcast.   

Harris also calls out California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whom she phoned after Biden dropped out of the race. "Hiking. Will call back." While Harris noted that Newsom never called her back, he did quickly get behind her that day.  Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker is also mentioned in the book, saying that initially he said he couldn't commit as the governor of Illinois and the 2024 convention host. Pritzker did endorse Harris the following day. 

Harris is of course also trying to sell a book, and juicy anecdotes were released to augment anticipation.

Those in Harris’s orbit also say the book successfully tells Harris’s version of the story and that readers will gain much insight into one of the most unusual election cycles in modern history. 

Harris only became her party’s nominee after Biden dropped out of the race in July 2024 under heavy pressure from leaders of his party. She then had just 107 days to mount a campaign.

At the same time, some of the allies said there could have been a bigger accountability by Harris on her part in her campaign’s defeat.

“It could have had a little more introspection and self-reflection,” one ally said.  

Jamal Simmons, who served as Harris’s communications director during her time as Vice President, said Harris “has a right to tell her story” particularly if she was treated the way she writes about in the book by the Biden White House. 

“I think people will read it and see she had a lot of hurdles to jump,” Simmons said. “And many of them she jumped well and some she had a hard time with.”

Harris’s book, in some ways, has drawn parallels to What Happened, Hillary Clinton’s post-election memoir in 2017, when the former Democratic nominee also sought to reflect on her losing campaign. 

One Democratic strategist noted that while former nominees have a right to tell their stories, they also need to be aware that their viewpoints “aren’t being told in a vacuum.” 

“It gives the other side an excuse to call us a mess while we air dirty laundry,” the strategist said. 

But Democratic strategist Anthony Coley, who worked for the Biden administration, took issue with that sentiment. 

“There are are always books from politicians after big moments in their careers and it’s better for her to write and be candid now than 12 months from now when we’re in the middle of an active midterm election,” Coley said. 

Coley said Harris is “peeling back a layer” and offering a level of insight and candor that people want to see in elected officials now. 

To that point, the strategist said he only has one regret: Harris, he said, “should have been more candid during the campaign.”