107 Days

On June 27, 2024, President Joe Biden debated Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate. A few days prior, Harris had spoken to the president in the middle of his grueling debate prep at Camp Davis. Biden had a cold and was dreading the debate, which many of his advisors had suggested he forgo altogether due to rising concerns about his age and memory. Harris sat down to watch the president with a “gnawing feeling.” Biden started speaking in a “thready voice” with “no light in his eyes” (14). His performance only worsened as the debate went on. Biden was correcting himself, often “sounding hesitant and garbled,” while Trump spoke, “unburdened by the truth” (14). Harris’s staffers tracked reactions on social media; Twitter was full of words like “disaster” and “train wreck.”

Following the debate, Harris was scheduled for several interviews, and she knew she had to speak the truth to the American people. First, Harris spoke to campaign staff and volunteers. She told them that Biden had tried to debate with “facts” and highlighted the numerous lies that Trump had told. Next, she was set to appear with Anderson Cooper on CNN, who asked her straight off if it was time for Biden to drop out of the race. Again, Harris highlighted Trump’s lies and argued that Biden’s track record in the White House said more about his capacity and commitment than 90 minutes of a debate.

As CNN continued its post-debate coverage, correspondent John King told Cooper that the Biden administration keeping Harris “under wraps” was “one of the greatest acts of political malpractice” he had ever seen (18).

At the vice president’s residence, Harris’s visiting family gathered quickly. A year prior, Harris’s brother-in-law, Tony West, had begun assembling a file of what Harris would need to do should she have to assume the presidency. Harris didn’t want to consider such a scenario, but Tony insisted it was prudent, given the president’s age.

It was Sunday afternoon, but Harris’s staff dropped their plans and rushed to the residence. The table where she had just prepared breakfast with her grandnieces “was suddenly covered in binders and notepads” (22). As her family and staff huddled around the kitchen table, Harris began calling her way through her address book, speaking to everyone from Bill and Hilary Clinton to Barack Obama and Roy Cooper. Most expressed support, some enthusiastically, while others did so with more caution. By 10:00 pm, Harris had spoken to over 100 people. The table was a mess, and Harris was still in her workout clothes from the morning. However, she insisted on gathering her team for a group picture to commemorate the start of her campaign. They were a collection of “[j]oyful warriors, about to go into the battle of [their] lives” (27).

Despite the sudden campaign rollout, Harris still had duties to see to as vice president. She was always up two hours before the scheduled start time each day to fix her hair, apply makeup, and dress in one of her signature pantsuits. She notes that “women are still judged on all this,” even though it seems “trivial” (29).

Harris flew to Delaware to address the employees and volunteers at Biden’s campaign headquarters. It was a “Joe-shaped organism” that they would need to adapt fast to work for Harris. Her team was already figuring out how to pivot Biden’s team to her new campaign while making room for the young people drawn to her candidacy. On the way to Delaware, Harris worked on her speech, knowing it would be one of the most important of her life. Upon landing, her husband, Doug, was there to greet her. They didn’t have time to speak to one another, but Harris took comfort in his presence. At the campaign headquarters, Harris was greeted by a crowd of cheering young people. Since Harris had declared her candidacy, the campaign had taken in $81 million, a complete turnaround from the previous weeks, which had been plagued by doubts over Biden’s competency.

In the campaign headquarters, Biden addressed the crowd first with recorded remarks, thanking his team for their hard work and urging them to embrace Harris. Harris knew that hesitation toward his candidacy had “wounded” the president, and she hoped that the applause from the crowd “lifted his spirits” (39). Harris was proud of all that she and Biden had accomplished, and she was eager to carry on his work while defining her own campaign. When she rose to address the campaign workers, she told them how she had fought against sexual predators, “fraudsters,” and “cheaters” as a courtroom prosecutor. She announced that she “[knew] Donald Trump’s type” to cheers and applause (40).

At her first rally in the swing state of Wisconsin, Harris promised the crowd: “We’re not going back” (43), a phrase that quickly became her campaign’s slogan and rallying cry.

Doug, meanwhile, was in Virginia, participating in a roundtable with individuals affected by the Dobbs decision. Since the Supreme Court decision that limited reproductive freedom, Doug had traveled across the country in his capacity as second gentleman, speaking to men about how they were also affected by issues related to reproductive health and access.

Harris and Doug met in 2013, when Doug was a divorced father of two teenagers. Harris wanted to take the relationship “slowly” with the children in mind, but Doug was all in. Less than a year later, they were married. Doug had never been particularly political, but he supported his wife through her campaign for reelection as attorney general of California and later as senator. Doug was supportive and protective, but struggled to fit into Washington as a male spouse and navigate the “long-standing social structures and well-understood roles for wives” (47). When Harris became vice president, Doug had to quit his job as a lawyer, a sacrifice he made “gladly and without bitterness” (47), but it wasn’t clear what his role would be in the White House. Like second ladies before him, the first second gentleman was in charge of organizing events for the Senate spouses, luncheons, and other events that were traditionally all-female spaces.

In response to the post-debate “crisis,” Biden’s staff filled his schedule to the point of exhaustion, causing him to perform poorly and seem even more frail and elderly. Harris never thought him to be incapable; he just needed rest, an impossibility on a political campaign. While she never doubted the president’s ability to govern, she did worry about his ability to campaign effectively.

Throughout her career, Harris always asked herself, “Who am I not hearing from?” (54), and then made an effort to bring those people into important conversations. During her time in the White House, she worked to create a “diverse coalition,” speaking with marginalized communities and demographics whose vote Democrats took for granted, like Black women.

Harris considers whether she should have suggested to Biden that he step aside sooner but muses that she “was in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out;” it would seem “incredibly self-serving” (56). She and the others close to Biden held on to the refrain that it was his and Jill’s decision to remain in the race, but now she believes that it was “reckless” not to speak up. There was too much at stake to leave the decision “to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition” (57).

Throughout her time as vice president, Harris “had to prove [her] loyalty, time and time again” (57). Harris did much important work as vice president, but the White House hardly mentioned her contributions or provided “any defense against untrue attacks” (57). Working on everything from foreign relations to irregular migration, the administration kept Harris’s successes under wraps and let negative “mischaracterizations” flourish unchecked. When the Dobbs decision was released, Harris began rallying support for reproductive rights. Many close to Biden saw her success as a threat, thinking, “If she’s shining, he’s dimmed” (62). For Harris, however, her success reflected well on the administration, illustrating Biden’s capacity to choose a competent second in command. Her success was impactful, but “[h]is team didn’t get it” (62).