Kamala Harris has no lessons for the Democrats – or herself

Part of the problem, I think, is timing. Reading it actually induces a degree of cognitive dissonance. The world has shifted so fundamentally on its axis since Donald Trump’s re-entry to the White House that it is extremely hard to compute that the 107-day period she recounts happened just one year ago. As recently as this time last year, we were still in the midst of it. Not enough time has passed for the events she narrates to be classified as “history”, and yet the turmoil that has unfolded since makes the book feel like a missive from a bygone age – interesting in an academic sense, but not particularly relevant to the here and now.

It is intended, I know, as an account of what happened, not an analysis of why it happened. And in fairness, a rehashing of the nuts and bolts of the election is not uninteresting to a political junkie like me. Harris’s accounts of the campaign stops, the numbers turning up to rallies, the process of selecting Tim Walz as her running mate (interestingly, he disappears almost completely from the book after his debate with JD Vance – she thought it a disaster), what happened behind the scenes of her preparations for the head-to-head debate with Trump – all of that is fascinating and well written. It also matters for the historical record. But in this moment, from Kamala Harris, is it enough? I don’t think so.

The situation in the US is getting darker by the day. The country is creeping (a less diplomatic but more honest word would be “galloping”) towards full-blown autocracy. Given America’s outsized influence on the world, this has grave implications for all of us. Whether in the rise of Reform or the provocative intervention in our politics of Elon Musk, we can already see evidence on our own shores of the truism that what starts in America rarely stays there. On both sides of the Atlantic, too many leaders of the centre left seem unable to properly meet the moment.

In this context, was it too much to expect the woman who was vice-president for four years and whose defeat allowed Trump to burst back into the Oval Office to indulge in some honest reflection on what she might have done differently? Or to attempt a substantive analysis of what has gone so wrong in America that someone like Trump can not only be elected but, in the space of less than a year, with virtually no opposition, dismantle so much of what passed for democracy? Or to offer us any hope that the Democrats might be in even the foothills of working out how to start fighting back?

Harris does none of these things in any meaningful sense. We read, for example, that “it was devastating to learn after the election that I lost some ground with voters under 30, especially young men”. But we get nothing of any substance from her on why that happened.

In a somewhat glib afterword to the book, she observes (rightly) that “the dismantling of our democracy did not start with the 2024 election”, that “the rightwing and religious nationalists have played the long game” and that “their plans have been amplified by the rise of a rightwing media ecosystem built to operationalise their agenda through massive propaganda, misinformation and disinformation”. All of that is true, but, to be blunt, we didn’t need a Kamala Harris book to point it out. What she could have offered are cogent thoughts on how we got to this point – on the watch of Democrats as well as Republicans – and what needs to be done to start turning the tide again. On the latter point, the best she can muster is this: “At the heart of my vision for the future is Gen Z.”

When we strip the book back to its core – and this is my biggest frustration with it – the only explanation she really gives for her defeat is lack of time. It is her repeated refrain that the campaign just wasn’t long enough for voters to get to know her or understand her policies. Indeed, this is the payoff line to the whole book: “One hundred and seven days were, in the end, not long enough to accomplish the task of winning the presidency.” At this point, it dawned on me that the book’s title isn’t just a description of what she is writing about – it is her excuse. She does genuinely seem to be saying that with just a few days, weeks or months more, she would have won. Does she really believe that? Because I’m not sure anyone else does. I know I don’t.

Even if we were to buy into her theory about the brevity of the campaign, Harris takes no responsibility for its ineffectiveness. Given that she had been vice-president for four years under Joe Biden, it seems valid to ask why voters didn’t know her better. All we learn is that it wasn’t her fault. It was because Biden and his team had sidelined her. She admits that Biden was allowed to stay in the race for far too long and concludes that this was “reckless”, but also absolves herself of any blame: “I was in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out.”

She is surprisingly unsparing in her criticism of Biden – citing, for example, briefings by his team and a bizarre phone call he made to her as she prepared to go on stage opposite Trump. I am certainly not without sympathy for the occasional frustrations of being a deputy leader – however, some of her comments struck me as a touch self-pitying for a woman who was second in command of the most powerful nation on earth.

There is much in this book that I found exasperating, but aspects of it depressed me too. Without appearing to recognise it, Harris seems to embody one of the failings of modern politics: the constant quest for positions calculated to offend the fewest voters. Obviously, compromise is a virtue in politics – and an art that seems lost in today’s world – but triangulation often ends up sounding too much like moral equivocation. On Gaza, while I am sure it doesn’t reflect how she really feels, she gives the impression of having cared more about finding the formulation that would lose the fewest votes than she did about the clarity, or justice, of her stance. She also expresses irritation that the young people turning up to her rallies to protest against genocide couldn’t see what, in her mind, was the bigger picture: “The threat to withhold their vote got to me. It felt reckless.”

On gun control, she had me in despair. She talks movingly about the shooting at Apalachee high school in Georgia in September 2024 – an atrocity that claimed four lives and left more injured. She tells us that it was the 84th school shooting that year, that America is “the only country in the world where the leading cause of death for children is guns” and that “one in five Americans has a relative who was killed by gun violence”. Brutal, searing stuff. But then she says this: “As a gun owner myself, I am not coming to take away anybody’s guns.” To which the only sane answer must surely be: “Why the hell not?” Of course, I know this is an issue deeply rooted in the American psyche. It is unfair to put it all on her. It is also no doubt another example of her trying to straddle an awkward issue in order not to lose votes. But it is dispiriting that even someone of her intelligence and empathy can’t see that this debate needs to move beyond “assault weapons bans” or “universal background checks” or better “safety drills in schools” – which is what she does argue for – and challenge head-on the very notion of gun ownership as a fundamental human right.

Despite all this, there are reminders here of what we should admire about Harris. Her political compass is broadly set in a good direction. Indeed, on some issues – immigration, abortion, trans rights – she takes admirably strong positions. She is an incredible role model, especially for black women. I also feel huge sympathy for – and empathy with – her. I understand the challenges of being a woman in politics – a subject on which she writes powerfully. I know how it feels to be vilified by the rightwing media. And I get, from my own experience, how hard it is in today’s polarised politics to stand up for what you believe in while also trying to be a unifying leader. Yet, for all that, the hard reality is I felt more despondent after reading this book than I did beforehand. I also can’t shake the feeling that the purpose of writing it may be more about testing the ground for another tilt at the White House than making sense of the last attempt. If I was to make up my mind about the prospect of that on the strength of this book alone, I’d have to conclude that it is not a good idea.

107 Days by Kamala Harris is published by Simon & Schuster (£25). Order a copy from The Observer Shop for £21.25. Delivery charges may apply

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