Former US vice president Kamala Harris has described allowing Joe Biden to seek a second term in office as “recklessness,” according to an excerpt from her upcoming memoir, 107 Days, published Wednesday by The Atlantic.
Harris, who stepped in as the 2024 Democratic presidential candidate after Biden dropped out but later lost to Donald Trump, said Biden’s age and declining stamina were clear concerns at the time.
“‘It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotised. Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness,” Harris wrote.
She argued that the decision should not have been left solely to Biden’s “ego” or “ambition,” given the stakes of the election.
Biden’s withdrawal and age concerns
Biden, then 81, ended his reelection campaign in July 2024 after a poor debate performance against Trump raised doubts about his mental acuity.
While Harris denied that aides had conspired to conceal Biden’s struggles, she acknowledged that his age sometimes showed.
“On his worst day, he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best. But at 81, Joe got tired. That’s when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles,” she wrote.
Friction inside the White House
Harris also accused Biden’s staff of undermining her during her vice presidency, saying they failed to defend her from negative media coverage and sometimes sought to diminish her influence.
“When the stories were unfair or inaccurate, the president’s inner circle seemed fine with it. Indeed, it seemed as if they decided I should be knocked down a little bit more,” Harris recalled.
She said she had also unfairly “shouldered the blame” for Biden’s controversial border policy, which Trump capitalised on during the campaign.
A short-lived campaign
Harris’s memoir title, 107 Days, refers to the shortest presidential campaign in modern US history, which lasted just over three months after Biden’s withdrawal. She went on to lose decisively to Trump in the November 2024 election.