In the late hours of Nov. 5, 2024, former Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, called with news that put a decisive and devastating cap on her past 107 days: “I don’t think you’re going to get there.”
At that moment, all Harris was able to repeat was: “My God, my God, what will happen to our country?”
Despite the presidential election having concluded nearly 11 months ago, Harris’ account of her loss evokes a dull ache as visceral as the day the results were announced. The election’s abrupt conclusion, after nearly 300 pages chronicling a campaign of hope and joy, felt like a cruel trick — a bait-and-switch gimmick that was somehow pulled off. Although Harris largely keeps her cards close to her chest in “107 Days,” these raw and vulnerable moments add a poignant layer to her account of the shortest presidential campaign in modern history.
As far as political memoirs go, Harris’ exists in a unique, nebulous category that mirrors her undefined post-election role in the political sphere. The book is neither an ex-politician’s retirement tell-all, nor the PR-approved statement of a politician aspiring to run in future election cycles. In this repsect, the novel is reminiscent of Harris’ campaign itself — toggling back and forth between issues with sweeping statements, exuding bipartisanship and neutrality to gain widespread appeal.
Throughout much of the book, Harris’ account of the campaign reads like a journal of her jam-packed daily schedule, with little room for respite or reflection. After the initial adrenaline that followed former President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the race and endorse her, Harris’ days fall into a static hum that somehow gains a monotonous rhythm, despite her being in one of the most surreal and unorthodox positions imaginable in American politics.
The novel becomes fascinating when Harris allows her unveiled thoughts to shine through. One example is her surprisingly candid insights into choosing a vice presidential candidate. She admits that Pete Buttigieg, then-U.S. Secretary of Transportation, was her top pick for VP. That is, if not for his identity as a gay man. Harris felt that the choice would have pushed America’s tolerance of identity politics a step too far, especially with a woman of color already at the top of the ticket. “He would have been an ideal partner–if I were a straight white man,” Harris wrote. “But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk.”
As for her ultimate pick of Tim Walz, readers get confirmation of what has already been speculated about other top candidates — while she considered Josh Shapiro to be too focused on his own role in the administration and Mark Kelly too untested for the divisive political landscape, Walz offered both a relatable everyman persona to appeal to middle America and a willingness to do whatever Harris needed of him. As the campaign played out, Harris treaded a tricky balance between stating her respect for Walz and expressing her frustration with his performance at times, especially during his vice-presidential debate with J.D. Vance. “You’re not there to make friends with the guy who is attacking your running mate,” Harris tells Walz through her television screen during the debate.
Beyond her relationship with her running mate, the fickle dynamic between Harris and Biden forms the true undercurrent of the book. While Harris debated current President Donald Trump on the national stage, behind the scenes, she was engaging in a far more complex and confusing battle with her own boss. Throughout the novel, Harris details various petty run-ins with the president after he concedes his candidacy to her. Minutes before her national debate with Trump, Harris describes a phone call in which Biden informs her that important power brokers in Philadelphia refused to support her after hearing that she’d been saying bad things about him. “I just couldn’t understand why he would call me, right now, and make it all about himself,” Harris writes.
Even so, Harris is unable to fully unpack the extent of her frustration with Biden, writing: “My feelings towards him were grounded in warmth and loyalty, but they had become complicated, over time, with hurt and disappointment.” Instead, she allows those around her to act as mouthpieces for this hurt and disappointment, from former Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff fuming over the Bidens’ questioning of their loyalty, to her campaign’s senior advisor David Plouffe bluntly saying, “People hate Joe Biden.”
But each moment of disappointment is matched with another moment of solidarity and support. While Biden failed to mention Harris’ name until the final moments of his speech at the Democratic National Committee, he also stated that selecting her as his vice president was the best decision he’d ever made. While he was unable to offer his support before Harris’ debate, he sent her a handwritten note before election day saying that he could not wait to call her Madame President.
The relationship that Harris delineates between them is one characterized by genuine camaraderie and solidarity, but also fractured by bruised egos, competition for the spotlight and divides within their own party. Perhaps the bitterness layered within the affection of their relationship is best embodied by Harris’ description of the signs waved at the Democratic National Convention during Biden’s speech: “WE [HEART] JOE,” with the disclaimer printed underneath, “Paid for by Harris for President.”
In many ways, “107 Days” is a means to set the record straight; to condemn the endless misinformation and disinformation that dragged down Harris’ campaign, especially as her gaining momentum prompted increased aggression and frustration on the right. Harris recalls a segment on “Fox & Friends” in which two college students alleged that they were kicked out of her rally for praising Christ. Harris vehemently denies this, stating that the clip shown on the show had been edited, and that in reality she had been responding to the students shouting that she was lying about Trump’s direct involvement in the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
In another instance, Harris explains her absence from Joe Rogan’s podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience.” Harris rebuts Rogan’s claim that she had been pushing for topic restrictions on the show, stating that she agreed to a no-limits conversation. She also says that while attempting to schedule a time to record the podcast, her team was told that the one day she was available would be a personal day for Rogan, only for him to host Trump on that very same date. Rogan’s endorsement of Trump closely followed.
Beyond correcting the record, Harris is interested in driving home her novel’s central thesis: her inability to properly conduct her presidential campaign in the timeframe allotted. “In 107 days, I didn’t have enough time to show how much more I would do to help [the American people] than [Trump] ever would,” she wrote. “And that makes me immensely sad.”
But to many who read her memoir, and the many more who followed the election, this argument doesn’t entirely hold up. After all, she was coming freshly off the heels of an extremely unpopular administration: In October 2024, both she and Biden’s approval ratings sat at 45% and 39% respectively. In her race against Trump, Harris’ biggest jump in national polling occurred in the initial weeks after becoming the Democratic nominee, largely plateauing midway through the campaign. Harris’ proposed policies were often broad and sweeping, failing to convince many voters that she had a concrete vision for the country.
In all fairness, Harris was put in a seemingly impossible position. It is a shame that she had to truncate an entire presidential campaign into 107 days. It is a shame that she was unable to focus on the full scope of issues she wanted to address, instead having to triage her platform’s talking points to appeal to the broadest scope of voters. It is a shame that she was not given the amount of time each candidate deserves to do so.
However, it must also be acknowledged that had there not been such a constrained timeframe, Harris may never have been the Democratic nominee in the first place.
Harris is, first and foremost, a prosecutor. In her closing argument of “107 Days,” she speaks of the America that she hopes the country can become. She speaks of a nation that is not as deeply divided, deeply entrenched and deeply despaired as Americans are increasingly feeling their country to be. “It is not too late for us,” Harris writes.
That may be the case for the country, but it certainly wasn’t for her campaign. The issues surrounding the Biden-Harris administration, such as rising inflation and concerns over the border, set in motion an uphill battle for Harris to win over Americans long before she became the assumed nominee July 21.
In a political period marked by polarization and extremism, when nearly every election is now a change election, Harris’ lament for more time feels closer to a plea to rewind the clock. After all, as the race went on, all time did was cinch the margins between Harris and Trump closer together, not widen them.
In the end, it may not have mattered whether Harris had 107 days or 1,070. Time does not equate to direction, nor does it extend backwards to mend what has already been broken. That is a tough pill for Harris and the Democratic Party to swallow. But it is a necessary one in order to move forward.
“107 Days” is characterized by hope and idealism, the same values that marked Harris’ candidacy as a whole. But it is simply not enough — not then, and not now. Harris is right in that it is not too late for the nation to center on the ideals of democracy and unity. But to do so, we must engage in thoughtful, truthful and painful introspection of lessons from the past to form a blueprint of the future — and the clock is ticking.
