A passage from former vice president Kamala Harris’s forthcoming memoir has drawn sharp criticism from allies of President Joe Biden, who said Harris’s depiction of his decision to remain in the 2024 race was an attempt to shift blame for her abbreviated presidential bid.
In an excerpt published Wednesday by The Atlantic, Harris wrote that it was "recklessness" to leave the question of whether Biden should run again to the president and his family and said she wondered if she should have urged him to step aside. The book, titled 107 Days, is scheduled for release on Sept. 23.
Harris’s account includes a passage in which she said that during "months of growing panic" she asked herself whether she should have told Biden to consider not running. She also complained that Biden did not mention her until nearly nine minutes into an 11-minute speech announcing he would withdraw from the race, and acknowledged that raising the issue with him earlier would have risked appearing self-interested.
Biden allies who spoke to the Daily Mail reacted angrily to Harris’s portrayal, calling it a "sloppy, craven, relatively unsophisticated attempt" to deflect responsibility for the campaign’s outcome. A White House official pushed back on Harris’s contention that the Biden team failed to defend her when she faced criticism as vice president, saying the administration often advocated for her in briefings and interviews.
The official said polling showed Biden’s approval remained higher than Harris’s at multiple points in his presidency, and that the administration worked to position him successfully when he served as vice president. The source also pointed to high staff turnover in Harris’s offices — during her time as vice president, in her 2020 campaign and as California attorney general — and said Harris’s difficulties reflected her own team’s performance.
Biden-aligned sources accused Harris’s campaign operation of missteps they said damaged her standing, citing in particular her earlier public remarks on gender-affirming care for prisoners. One insider said that tape became a potent attack ad in the general-election campaign and criticized Harris’s advisers for not countering it more aggressively.
The Daily Mail reported that some in Biden’s orbit were skeptical of Harris’s broader claim that she could have prevailed in a Democratic primary had Biden withdrawn sooner, arguing that she benefited from Biden’s 2020 selection of her as his running mate and would have faced steep competition in an open primary.
Sources told the Daily Mail they were unsure whether Biden had read the manuscript. One said the Bidens would recognize the political calculations involved and suggested Harris’s comments were part of an effort to remain politically viable.
Harris’s excerpt framed the choice over Biden’s candidacy as more than a personal decision. "The stakes were simply too high," she wrote, according to The Atlantic. She also reflected on her own limitations in counseling the president, writing that she feared any suggestion he step aside would be read by him as naked ambition or disloyalty.
Harris’s promotional schedule for 107 Days lists appearances in major cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The book and the reactions it has provoked highlight lingering tensions inside the Democratic Party as former allies reassess the decisions that shaped the 2024 campaign.
The exchange underscores competing narratives about responsibility for the campaign’s collapse: Harris’s memoir seeks to explain her own choices and to critique what she frames as a broader leadership error, while Biden allies say that internal campaign and staffing problems, not the former president’s decision-making, best account for the outcome. Neither Harris nor the White House immediately provided extended on-the-record comment beyond the published excerpts and reactions reported by the Daily Mail.