"107 Days", by Kamala Harris

This book was a huge disappointment to me. Harris has a short chapter on each of the 107 days of her 2024 campaign, resulting in an account that is filled with lots of mundane details on the day-to-day activities of the campaign, and with not enough philosophical reflection on the meaning of that campaign.

The part that was of most interest to me is her account of her infamous bungling of the question on "The View" of what she would have done differently than Joe Biden. She says she was ready for the question, but forgot how she had planned to answer it. Her planned answer was this: "I'm not Joe Biden and I'm certainly not Donald Trump...But to specifically answer your question, throughout my caereer I have worked with Democrats, independents, and Republicans, and I know that great ideas come from all places. If I'm president I would appoint a Republican to my cabinet."

Instead her response was, "There is not a thing that comes to mind". This was the kiss of death for her campaign. Harris explains her woeful response: "The way I heard Sunny's question was that it was asking me to be critical of Joe. I've never believed you need to elevate yourself by pushing someone else down. To do so would have been to embrace the cruelty of my opponent. In the moment, I didn't see a way to answer the question without doing that."

Do you see the problem with this explanation? If not, go back and read it again. Do you see it now? What Harris is saying is that it is "cruel" to disagree with someone. This kind of thinking is at the heart of what is so wrong these days with our political culture. We are unable to disagree with each other without being disagreeable, without demonizing the other person. There would have been nothing wrong with Harris pointing out some areas in which she would have doen things differently. But she was unwilling to articulate any of them.

After this debacle, her campaign strategist David Plouffe did an intervention with her, telling her bluntly that "People hate Joe Biden".

Harris worked very hard every day of the campaign, and did not deserve to lose the election because of one weak moment. But politics is an unforgiving endeeavor.

The real villlain in this story is not Kamala Harris, but Joe Biden, who refused to get out of the race early enough to give Harris time to build up her stature with the voters. Biden's legacy has been forever tarnished as a result.