Caden Proulx
After witnessing the 2024 election, I did not see a scenario in which former Vice President Kamala Harris would ever be able to critique former President Joe Biden’s presidency. After all, she is so deeply intertwined in it.
What made this assumption easy was that we didn’t know the extent of what was happening behind the scenes. The candidness with which Harris writes this book offers a rare glimpse into a White House that was shrouded in secrecy, where Harris was notably absent from the action quite often.
Harris announced her memoir “107 Days” July 31, and it came out on Sept. 23. It has become a New York Times’ Best Seller for the combined print and e-book nonfiction category.
“107 Days” focuses on so much more than just the Harris-Walz campaign’s efforts to secure the 2024 election in a fraction of the time a normal campaign would have. It’s much more of a chronicle, starting with her swearing in, when she became the first Black, Asian and woman Vice President.
She was the deciding vote presiding over the Senate on key judge nominations, budget proposals and legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, which she speaks about in detail in the book. Notably, the Biden-Harris administration continued a Democratic tradition of protecting the Affordable Care Act, and she is known for her fierce advocacy on reproductive and voting rights, later staking her campaign on them.
The memoir takes quite an intimate route discussing public figures and their private conversations; by that I mean she must have taken a hell of a lot of heat for recounting some of these interactions.
These conversations include interactions with President Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and several high-profile governors whom Harris basically dogs on for their late endorsement, which greatly contributed to the public’s initial reluctance to back her ticket.
Harris recalled the moment she received a call from Biden, seemingly out of nowhere, turning her life upside down and captivating the nation. After several weeks of blowback from the June debate against Trump, it finally became clear what had to happen.
Simply, the cute mentorship — or even “friendship” — that many loved between Biden and Harris was a complete facade. Internally, even before the election fallout, Harris recalled deep inequality in their relationship. The question that isn’t answered by knowing the dynamic to be fake, though, is why Biden handled the situation in such a careless way.
Even though Biden had weeks during which Harris could have been building her campaign, the announcement was rushed and caught senior figures in the party completely off guard.
However, this candidness seemed to turn into clear ignorance around key policies she was tied to, such as the administration’s stance on the genocide in the Gaza Strip.
“While he could passionately state, ‘I am a Zionist,’ his remarks about innocent Palestinians came off as inadequate and forced,” Harris said when speaking about former President Biden.
I don’t disagree with her at all, but to not also classify her own remarks as inadequate and forced is hypocritical and seeks to exonerate her of her own complicity — no, ma’am.
This is a line we see well walked throughout the book: the ability to be open and candid in a way that seeks to distance herself from Biden, while isolating this to buzzwords she knows will be popular to say or even just acknowledge.
But internally, it seems she’s wanted to distance herself from Biden since early in the administration. Perhaps part of the reason she wasn’t in the public eye much after the border crisis was pinned on her was just as much due to the climate inside the White House as the political fallout.
Among staff, and even Biden himself, Harris described feeling that her successes were often downplayed, so as not to overshadow 46.
The ways in which she describes the little things that Biden would do to discredit her in her biggest moments only go to further explain why Biden and his staff handled his dropping out so recklessly, as Harris puts it. It really shows that he had no self-awareness and a concerning demand for loyalty and respect of rank without giving any back.
The insight into the tightly guarded Biden administration is significant, but I truly believe one of the biggest ways in which this memoir shines is by depicting the genuine grief and emotional loss she endured.
How Harris described the more personal and traumatizing moments between her and her husband, Doug Emhoff, is the kind of emotional experience that many politicians are scared to be open about. But even though the biggest loss is being unable to run a full-length, fair campaign, this massive personal aspiration isn’t even at the forefront of her mind. It was a genuine shock at what would happen to the country.
The cover art further illustrates just how minuscule this amount of time was. The white text appears against a blue background, counting from one to 107 from the start to the end of the book. The text is spaced out, not overcrowding the cover; yet, it so strikingly fits, allowing the reader to easily glance from one to 107 and how short the in-between truly is.
Despite this enormous task, her reflection on the weight of feeling like she was asking so much of America to elect a dual minority identity to the presidency is a tragic portrayal of where this country is at.
The Democratic National Committee never had Kamala Harris’ back, and neither did many of the party’s most recognizable faces, including Gavin Newsom. The reason is so blatant and only serves to reinforce the weight she felt of being a Black woman at the highest level of government.
What she did despite all these challenges and betrayals is evident in the viral photo of her speaking in front of a Black little girl, a symbol of her campaign, which is on the back of her book as well. And I think the message that it sends and the representation it holds is exactly why she put it there.
Ultimately, Harris is still a politician whose ambitions are unknown as of yet, and that is largely reflected as she carefully chooses what to include and how far she can toe the line in what she includes. While this is a candid memoir, I would say it is far from a “tell-all,” as many praise it to be. However, this does lead me to believe that we haven’t seen the end of Kamala Harris just yet.
Reach Caden Proulx at entertainment@collegian.com or on social media @cadenpru.