Kamala Harris says in her forthcoming campaign memoir that insiders were practically “hypnotized” into backing ex-former President Biden’s decision to run for reelection in 2024 amid questions about his age and fitness to serve.
The ex-vice president and losing Democratic candidate recounts that White House aides, including herself, went along with groupthink “mantra” that the first couple alone should decide whether Biden would stay in the 2024 race against President Trump.
“‘It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized,” Harris writes in “107 Days,” according to excerpts published by The Atlantic Wednesday.
Harris adds that she now questions whether she and other members of Biden’s inner circle should have spoken up, even if it meant challenging their boss.
“Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness,” Harris writes.
The excerpt marks the first time Harris has commented on Biden’s decision to run for reelection, although it wasn’t 100% clear if she is referring to his original decision to seek a second term or his effort to stay in the race after a poor debate performance piled even more pressure on him to step aside.
It’s also a remarkable act of self-criticism for one of the Democratic Party’s top leaders, who has not closed the door on a 2028 run for the White House.
“The stakes were simply too high,” Harris writes in the book. “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.”
Biden effectively shut down debate about his decision to seek reelection within the White House and among powerful players in the party. But that decision blew up in their face after the stumbling debate performance sparked a tsunami of questions about his ability to lead the nation.
After initially sticking to his guns, Biden eventually pulled the plug on his campaign and handed the baton to Harris in late July, giving her little more than 15 weeks to mount a campaign against Trump.
In the book excerpt, Harris continues to defend Biden’s ability to do the job but admits he ran out of steam during the last year in office.
“On his worst day, he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best,” she writes in the book, set to be published by Simon & Schuster on Sept. 23.
“But at 81,” she adds, “Joe got tired.”
