Kamala Harris laments ‘recklessness’ of Biden’s decision to run again in new book, which she’ll promote in Philly this month

The first excerpt from former Vice President Kamala Harris’ book, 107 Days, was released Wednesday, and it offers Harris’ frank assessment of her relationship with former President Joe Biden and the White House during her tenure.

Harris will likely offer that perspective to a Philadelphia crowd later this month, when she visits the Met Philadelphia on Sept. 25, in conjunction with Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee & Books, as the first event in a 15-stop book tour across the United States, with other stops in London and Toronto.

107 Days details her whirlwind 2024 presidential bid against President Donald Trump. The title is a reference to the length of her campaign — the shortest presidential general election campaign in modern history. The book is set to be released Sept. 23.

It’s fitting that Harris is starting her book tour in Pennsylvania, given that the battleground was a major focus of the presidential campaign as both the vice president and Trump frequently visited the swing state in the lead-up to Election Day and spent more than $500 million in advertising to reach Pennsylvania voters.

Harris, a Democrat, became the nominee after Biden dropped out of the race in July 2024, amid widespread concern about his viability and effectiveness as a candidate.

In the excerpt, titled “The Constant Battle,” published by the Atlantic on Wednesday, Harris recounted how she grappled with the mounting public discourse last year about the physical well-being of Biden, then 81, and his fitness to run for reelection. It’s the first time that Harris has offered what appears to be an unfettered opinion on the circumstances that led to her becoming the first Black woman to be a major-party presidential nominee.

“During all those months of growing panic, should I have told Joe to consider not running? Perhaps. But the American people had chosen him before in the same matchup. Maybe he was right to believe that they would do so again,” she wrote, adding that she had not wanted to come across as “self-serving” by telling Biden to reconsider.

Harris said that Biden always possessed the knowledge, experience, and personality to be president, but that at his age he would get tired, resulting in verbal and physical gaffes — including his disastrous June 2024 debate performance against Trump — that sparked public speculation.

“I don’t believe it was incapacity,” Harris wrote. “If I believed that, I would have said so. As loyal as I am to President Biden, I am more loyal to my country.”

The choice to run or not to run was up to Biden and his wife, former first lady Jill Biden, but Harris wrote in her book that this deference was “recklessness.”

“The stakes were simply too high,” she wrote. “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 also recounted feeling that the White House did not defend her qualifications or achievements, including when she was inaccurately dubbed the “border czar” by Republicans who argued that the U.S. has poor border security. At times, Harris wrote, “the president’s staff was adding fuel to negative narratives that sprang up around me.”

In other instances, Harris wrote, her growing popularity during the Biden presidency was frowned upon by individuals close to the former president. She said she was “castigated” after delivering a speech about the war in Gaza “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,” she wrote. “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.

“His team didn’t get it,” she added.