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Speaking in New York, Harris said she “put too much thought into the answer”. But she also revealed that she was reluctant to separate herself from a wounded Biden if it required criticism. “I was not about to pile on at that moment,” she said to applause.
Harris was briefly asked about a key revelation in her book: that she decided against her first preference for a vice-presidential running mate – then-transport secretary Pete Buttigieg – because he was gay.
“He would have been an ideal partner – if I were a straight white man,” Harris writes. But the Democrats were already “asking a lot” of America to accept a black woman married to a Jewish man (Doug Emhoff).
On stage on Wednesday night, Harris said she told her husband at one point: “F— it, Dougie, I’m just going to do it.” But she changed her mind. “The stakes were so high. Was I being too cautious? I think we should talk about that, but that was the decision I made.”
A bridge too far
In the book, Harris insists Biden was physically and mentally capable of being president, and if she had thought he wasn’t, she would have said something. But she concedes she was concerned about his ability to campaign.
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Harris says she had planned to do much of the travel and the big public rallies, while Biden’s team “fashioned a White House-based campaign for him”. But she felt even that was too much and blames his inner circle for not telling him straight.
“[They] should have realised that any campaign was a bridge too far, and that in its rigours, he’d be perpetually, increasingly, unavoidably exhausted,” Harris writes. “They should have counselled him accordingly. Instead, it seemed that the worse things got, the more they pushed him.”
Harris says in the book she felt she could not choose Pete Buttigieg as her running mate because she was a black woman and he was a gay man.Credit: AP
Harris calls the Democrats’ collective failure on this reckless. She told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow she includes herself in this. But she also excused herself, saying it would have seemed “completely self-serving” for her to suggest to Biden that he drop out, or even that he should consider it.
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Then Harris pivoted back towards her main thesis: that it was an unprecedented election, Trump had been campaigning for 10 years, and she had only 107 days. She talked about running an optimistic campaign.
Harris has largely given interviews to sympathetic audiences this week: MSNBC and ABC’s The View among them. And there were no hard questions from moderator Errin Haines on stage in New York on Wednesday.
As The New York Times noted in its review, the book’s diary structure means it is heavy on recounting the campaign and light on introspection or reflection.
At the Town Hall theatre, the former vice president was perhaps at her strongest when she was condemning what she called the capitulation of business leaders – primarily in the media and technology sectors – to the Trump administration’s anti-democratic instincts and demands.
“I always believed – perhaps in retrospect, naively – that when push came to shove, these titans of industry would somehow be among the guardrails to protect our democracy,” Harris said.
“Yet they’re kneeling at the altar of the tyrant. They are yielding to what they believe is a threat to what? Their yacht and their house in the Hamptons?”
Later that night at a nearby bar, Phillip Bruner, a professor from Seattle, said he found Harris’ analysis on the election legitimate – she was locked out of Biden’s inner circle, and wasn’t given enough time to establish her own identity.
Phillip Bruner, a business professor from Seattle with Democratic connections, said Kamala Harris was never going to win the 2024 election.Credit: Michael Koziol
So, could she have won if the campaign had been longer? “I don’t know, probably not,” Bruner said. “She is widely unpopular among most people outside of the Democratic constituency that supported Obama.
“As much as I think she’s incredibly qualified, unfortunately, I think because she’s a woman and a mixed-race person, most of the American voters are sadly not ready for that.”
Bruner, who has Democratic connections, said there was no way Harris could run again. He likes Buttigieg for 2028, spruiking him as someone who can reach across the aisle and serve as a bridge between the party’s old guard (people like Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi or even Bernie Sanders) and the new guard.
“He’s young, he’s articulate … he wins concessions from conservative pundits on Fox News regularly,” Bruner said. “He’s an inspiring figure.”
