Harris Says It Was ‘Recklessness’ to Defer to Bidens on Reelection Decision

The Washington Post

17:19 JST, September 11, 2025

Former vice president Kamala Harris writes in an upcoming book that it was “recklessness” to leave President Joe Biden to decide with first lady Jill Biden whether he should have sought reelection at age 80, a decision between the two that ultimately unraveled in last year’s White House race.

“The stakes were simply too high,” Harris said in an excerpt from the book published Wednesday by the Atlantic. “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.”

Harris described how she wrestled with whether to advise Biden to consider not running for a second term. She said she “perhaps” should have weighed in, but she worried it would have looked “incredibly self-serving” and disloyal for her to do as his vice president and a likely front-runner for their party’s nomination if he stepped aside.

When asked for reaction to Harris’s book excerpt, a spokesperson for Biden declined to comment.

The book, “107 Days,” is set for release on Sept. 23 and promises to recap the abbreviated campaign that Harris waged – and lost – after Biden abandoned his reelection bid in the summer of 2024. In the excerpt, Harris also writes candidly about not feeling supported by Biden’s staff, who she said “rarely” defended her against Republican attacks.

The book’s release is poised to revive uncomfortable questions for Democrats, who continue to contemplate whether Biden should have initially run for reelection.

Harris disputed the notion there was a cover-up of Biden’s ability to serve – the premise of a book by two journalists released earlier this year – but said that by the time he was 81, Biden “got tired,” and it “showed in physical and verbal stumbles.”

“I don’t believe it was incapacity,” Harris said. “If I believed that, I would have said so. As loyal as I am to President Biden, I am more loyal to my country.”

Both Biden and Harris have kept a low profile since leaving the White House in January. Harris considered running for governor in her home state, California, but said in July she would not do so, keeping the door open to another presidential bid in 2028.

Harris is set to follow up the release of the book with a nationwide promotional tour that will mark her most extensive reemergence in the public spotlight since she left office. The tour will come on the heels of President Donald Trump’s decision to cancel the extended Secret Service protection that Biden had discreetly granted her before his presidency ended.

In the excerpt, Harris also writes extensively about what she saw as a lackluster effort by Biden’s staff to promote her work and push back against Republican efforts to undermine her. Biden had a “huge” team of communications aides at his disposal, Harris wrote, but it was “almost impossible” to get them to help her.

Harris cited a number of moments in which she felt White House staffers did not adequately defend her, including when there was a string of reports about turmoil in her office and when the GOP derided her as the “border czar” after Biden put her in charge of studying the root causes of migration to the United States.

Harris also accused Biden’s advisers of feeling threatened when she received positive public attention, citing as an example the March 2024 speech that she gave in Alabama calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s war in Gaza. Their thinking, she said, was “zero-sum: If she’s shining, he’s dimmed.”

“My success was important for him,” she wrote. “His team didn’t get it.”