Former Vice President Kamala Harris has ignited a firestorm among Democrats after releasing a memoir excerpt that questions Joe Biden’s cognitive fitness during his re-election bid.
Biden aides are hitting back in a rare public rupture between the former president and his vice president.
“No one wants to hear your pity party,” one former Biden White House official said, as allies of the former president rallied to defend him.
Harris phoned Biden on Tuesday to give him a warning about the excerpt from her upcoming memoir 107 Days, according to two people familiar with the call who spoke to Politico.
However, the olive branch did little to cool tempers inside Biden’s orbit.
In the excerpt, published in The Atlantic, Harris described watching Biden struggle behind the scenes, saying the 81-year-old “got tired”—echoing a storyline Biden’s White House fiercely rejected for years. That was eventually upended by the book “Original Sin,” by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson.
Harris called it “reckless” that no one intervened sooner to halt his re-election campaign.
“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,” Harris wrote. “It should have been more than a personal decision.”
The rare candor enraged several former aides who had served both Biden and Harris. “I hate that we’re beating up on a man struggling with cancer, and [who] did genuinely serve our country pretty damn well, even if he made a critical error at the end,” said one former aide.
“But maybe what is even more painful is we needed more of this distinction and acknowledgement during the campaign… I’m most offended by this being too little, too late.”
Another former Biden aide wondered why Harris had not raised the alarm earlier. “Why didn’t she do this during the campaign?” the person said, when her “main imperative would’ve been to distance herself because there was an election going on.”
A person familiar with Harris’ thinking pushed back, saying the Biden-focused material was not the main thrust of her book.
“She set out to be candid in this book, whether that’s her genuine struggles with how to balance her loyal relationship with President Biden with tough political realities, or reflecting on her own missteps on the campaign trail, which I know she also writes about,” the person said. “She is being honest about her own experience.”
But some Democrats dismissed her account outright. One national Democrat called the memoir excerpt “coming off as a grievance narrative.”
“If you’re trying to be seen as a stateswoman, this… misses the mark,” they said. “Her criticisms weren’t on the substance … It speaks to why she lost.”
107 Days comes out Sept. 23. It chronicles the former vice president’s shortened campaign after Biden quit the race on July 21, 2024.
The Daily Beast has contacted representatives of both Biden and Harris.
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