Vice President turned presidential candidate Kamala Harris is finally telling her side of the story. In her upcoming book, 107 Days, out September 23, Harris pulls back the curtain on her time in the White House, the challenges of running for president, and the tense months leading into the 2024 election.
While Harris makes clear that loyalty has always been one of her defining traits, she also doesn’t shy away from naming what she now sees as a mistake: staying silent about whether President Joe Biden should have pursued a second term against Donald Trump.
In one of the book’s most talked-about excerpts released by The Atlantic, Harris recounts the pressure she felt as Biden’s vice president during a time of growing public concern about his age and stamina.
“During all those months of growing panic, should I have told Joe to consider not running? Perhaps,” she writes. “…We all said, ‘It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized. Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness. The stakes were simply too high.”
Her words capture the bind of being second-in-command—torn between private doubts and public loyalty. Harris stresses that her hesitation wasn’t about personal ambition but about what she saw as the country’s future hanging in the balance.
The book blends political reflection with vivid storytelling. Harris recalls visiting Houston after Hurricane Beryl, where she met with devastated families and first responders. She writes about seeing resilience in ordinary people even amid tragedy.
But the political undertone was never far away. Harris recalls watching one of Biden’s primetime addresses and noticing it took nearly nine minutes before her contributions were even acknowledged. “And that was it,” she writes.
The slight reinforced her precarious position: a vice president needing to prove her loyalty while being branded by critics as overly ambitious or unqualified.
What comes through clearly is Harris’s frustration with how her work was often downplayed. She notes how Fox News attacks about her voice, laugh, or personal history went largely unanswered by the White House’s communications team. Her résumé—two terms as district attorney, California’s attorney general, and U.S. senator—was rarely used as a counterweight to claims that she was merely a “DEI hire.”
“I am a loyal person,” she emphasizes. But in the same breath, she admits that loyalty sometimes prevented her from saying what she truly felt. “As loyal as I am to President Biden, I am more loyal to my country.”
Although some may question whether it’s productive to revisit the 2024 race, Harris’ book serves as more than just political hindsight. 107 Days provides her perspective on history in motion, offering both personal clarity and a candid inside look at one of the most consequential political years in modern America.
For Harris, the book is not just about explaining decisions past, but about asserting her voice in a political landscape that often muted it. And this time, she’s determined not to stay silent.
