“We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotised,” she wrote. “Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness. The stakes were simply too high. 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.”
Ultimately, Biden quit the race about three weeks after he stunned his party, the country and the world with a horrible performance in a crucial debate against Trump, in which he repeatedly lost his train of thought and made up garbled sentences such as: “We finally beat Medicare.”
Biden came to office saying he would be a transitional figure; that he did not want a second term and would look to hand the reins to a younger candidate. But Harris’ book will paint a picture of a Biden White House that never invested in her success, and was happy for negative stories or narratives to develop around her.
“Their thinking was zero-sum: If she’s shining, he’s dimmed,” Harris says in the excerpt. “None of them grasped that if I did well, he did well. That given the concerns about his age, my visible success as his vice president was vital … His team didn’t get it.”
Even as Biden bowed out of the race and Harris was campaigning against Trump for the presidency, there were examples of Biden failing to give her a boost. She mentions a highly anticipated speech he gave from the Oval Office after dropping out, in which he only mentioned her for three short sentences, after nine minutes.
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“I want to thank our great vice president, Kamala Harris. She is experienced, she’s tough, she’s capable. She’s been an incredible partner to me and leader for our country,” Biden said.
“And that was it,” Harris wrote.
Previous books chronicling the seismic 2024 election, which Harris lost to Trump, reported that Biden warned Harris not to tarnish his legacy by distancing herself from his agenda.
That was crucial because Biden had negative approval ratings towards the end of his term, and Americans were dissatisfied over high inflation and ballooning unlawful immigration. But Harris was restricted in her ability to differentiate herself from her predecessor and present as a candidate who would bring change.
A spokeswoman for Biden declined to comment on the book to The New York Times and other US media. The book will be published later this month.
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