In her upcoming memoir 107 Days, former US vice president Kamala Harris rips into Joe Biden over running for a second presidential term.
Having worked under the 82-year-old for four years until 2025, Harris was best placed to witness the mental mechanics behind Biden's decision, which ultimately led to Donald Trump returning to the White House for his own second crack at the presidency.
Per The Atlantic, an excerpt from the tell-all autobiography (hitting shelves September 23) features Harris in attack mode, and it's not gone down too rosily with former White House officials.
"Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness," she writes of her choice not to persuade Biden to leave the 2024 race earlier.
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"The stakes were simply too high," continues Harris.
"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."
In response to this now-public outlook, one ex-official has told The New York Post that her admission dents any sniff of a political comeback in four years' time.
"No one wants a leader that can’t speak truth to power, but I do not think she is going to run,” the Democratic aide reckons.
“Is she just going to be like ‘Sure’ [to Vladimir] Putin and then write in a book she should have said 'don’t bomb Poland'?"
A second Biden colleague commented: "We honestly thought that it was going to be a nothingburger. This actually made me want to buy it.
"I’m sure the [book] tour will sell out. I’m sure she will make a lot of money from this. I’m sure it will raise her profile even more. But it’s not going to give her any political footing."
Further into the Harris debrief, she highlights how the US citizenship had backed Biden before 'in the same matchup', muddying her concerns about his potential second tenure.
"Of all the people in the White House, I was in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out," she recalls.
"I knew it would come off to him as incredibly self-serving if I advised him not to run. He would see it as naked ambition, perhaps as poisonous disloyalty, even if my only message was: Don’t let the other guy win.”
This comes as the 60-year-old appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to discuss her next career move after skipping the Californian governance election.
Harris confessed that she'd considered running for governor, but ultimately decided it was time for a break.
"Recently, I made the decision, at least for now, I don’t want to go back in the system, I think it’s broken," she told the talk show host.
Apparently, she's going to use her sabbatical wisely by travelling across the states to converse with real people, adding that she doesn't want to appear 'transactional' when she's asking for their vote.
Topics: Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Politics, US News, Donald Trump
Dan Seddon