67 pages • 2-hour read
107 Days
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Themes
Loyalty and the Limits of Support
107 Days is a story about the dangers of political loyalty. Upon becoming the presidential nominee, Harris struggled to run a successful campaign that distanced her from the increasingly unpopular President Biden while maintaining the trust and loyalty that is crucial to the working relationship between a president and vice president.
In the text, Harris depicts being vice president as performing a balancing act. The president must trust their vice president completely; they must be sure they are loyal and won’t act in favor of their own ambition. Harris is proud of her loyalty, opening the text with an epigraph quoting Kendrick Lamar: “I got loyalty, got royalty inside my DNA” (vii). However, she also recognizes how her loyalty to Biden was sometimes misplaced. The administration kept Harris “under wraps” during her time as vice president, assigning her thankless tasks, allowing mischaracterizations of her work and character to flourish unchallenged, and keeping her successes out of the spotlight. Biden’s team worried that Harris’s success would reflect poorly on Biden, that she might start to seek her own agenda, and become disloyal to the president. Harris argues the opposite, that a strong vice president reassures the public and provides “a testament to his judgment” (51). Keeping Harris out of the public eye meant that American voters didn’t know her well when it was finally time for her to step forward as the Democratic Party’s leader.
Harris’s loyalty revealed the limits of Biden’s support for her campaign. President Biden and his team repeatedly showed unwillingness to give her the same level of commitment that she did them, and this continued to cause problems over the course of Harris’s campaign. Repeatedly, Harris “led with Joe” (52), starting her speeches by praising the president, his legacy, and the achievements of his administration. She was sensitive to the fact that the calls for Biden to step down were hard on him and his family. However, Biden and his team failed to grasp the urgency and high stakes of Harris’s campaign. They wanted, for example, to wait a number of days between Biden’s announcement of his withdrawal and his endorsement of Harris, presumably out of respect for the president. Likewise, in his convention speech, Biden gave a lengthy “legacy speech” that he was “entitled to” (122-23) and waited until the very end to mention Harris and endorse her.
Harris’s misplaced loyalty led to a costly mistake when a panelist on the talk show The View asked her what she would have done differently from Biden during his four years in office. Harris answered “not a thing” (212), and the Trump campaign capitalized on the sound bite, using it to cement the relationship between Harris and Biden in the public’s mind. This moment made Harris realize just how unpopular Biden had become and the political dangers of being closely associated with him. However, she was still vice president and felt she owed him her loyalty.
In hindsight, Harris believes she should have played key moments—like The View interview—differently but admits that there was no real solution to the compromised position in which she found herself, needing to fulfill two roles with opposing goals. In this way, her campaign serves as a cautionary tale for future politicians and anyone navigating the line between loyalty and independence in their careers.
Leadership and Responsibility
Throughout the chronicle of her presidential campaign, Harris describes her leadership philosophy and contrasts it with the type of leadership her opponent, Donald Trump, embodies. The main quality of her leadership type is her sense of responsibility to the people she represents, whereas Trump’s primary leadership tactic is to sow public discord without taking responsibility for the actions that follow, such as the January 6 riot.
In the text, Harris positions herself as an already important leader in the United States with serious responsibilities, all of which she fulfills, no matter the circumstances. From her role as vice president to her concession after losing the election and overseeing the peaceful transfer of power, she emphasizes her continued commitment and responsibility to serve the American people.
The text emphasizes the tension between the public face of leadership and the behind-the-scenes work it entails. Harris does this by describing her work as vice president, including how she managed complex international diplomatic efforts and rallied the American people around specific causes, such as reproductive rights. The public was rarely aware of Harris’s successful efforts as vice president, a factor that hurt her campaign when she was thrust into the presidential spotlight. Facing live television interviews just moments after Biden’s debate against Trump ended, Harris had to navigate the complexity of acknowledging the poor performance that the American public had just watched Biden give, while continuing to support the president and calming Democratic voters’ fears. These and other leadership tasks, like managing relationships, negotiations, and fragile egos, require a high level of “emotional dexterity” (80) that must be distilled into a few carefully chosen comments to reporters.
Another key responsibility of leadership for Harris is being a protector. A leader, Harris insists, must protect and lift up vulnerable populations. To do this, leaders must ask themselves, “Who am I not hearing from?” and “make it their business to seek those folks out” (44). Leaders are also responsible for bringing people together, not driving them further apart. Throughout her campaign, Harris embodied these ideals, crafting a “message of inclusion” (258) and attempting to speak to everyone she could, even those with whom she disagreed. While Trump focused on speaking to his core supporters, Harris scheduled appearances on conservative networks, such as Fox News. She is adamant that the president of the United States is president to all Americans, not just their supporters, and reiterates many times her intention to be such a leader.
Integrity and Compromise in Political Campaigns
One of the biggest challenges Harris faced during her campaign was the pressure to balance the issues she cared about with the issues that would be most impactful to the American public during the short time she had to win their votes. She had to maintain integrity and authenticity while shifting her campaign focus to the economy despite wanting to focus on broader issues like climate change. Harris is careful to differentiate this from compromising her values, which she never did, even when faced with misinformation and untruths from her opponents.
The text emphasizes that Harris didn’t face these pressures alone. Crafting a successful campaign that maintained this balance was a test of stamina that required the collective effort of many talented individuals. The compressed timeline amplified the physical, mental, and emotional pressures of the campaign trail, requiring even greater teamwork and dedicated efforts. Harris was the face of the campaign, but the image and messaging she conveyed were the work of many aligned supporters.
That alignment was critical when Harris received the sudden news that Biden was dropping out of the race. It was a Sunday afternoon, and her team immediately signaled their dedication by “dropp[ing] whatever they were doing and rush[ing] to [Harris’s] side” (15). For the rest of the day, everyone worked non-stop, Harris making phone calls to ensure party support while her team strategized. No one took the time to change out of their Sunday morning workout clothes or clear the remnants of breakfast from the table, indicating the single-minded focus the campaign demanded from the start. This ensured that Harris would be able to run a campaign based on integrity rather than compromise; if her team dissented, she might have had to change her strategy to keep them on board, but that didn’t happen.
One of the text’s goals is to show how Harris managed to run a campaign based on integrity despite working within a worst-case scenario. This includes how the team maintained their morals and positivity amid the uncertainty they faced. For the duration of the campaign, Harris’s team “put their lives on hold,” working “inhumane hours” while remaining “positive and loyal and ready to laugh” (274). Harris dedicates the text to them, thanking them for their commitment. That moral support freed Harris to be “entirely present” to connect with supporters. Conveying authenticity “in front of voters […] was the prime commodity of the campaign” (261). This created the sense of trust Harris needed to win Americans’ support while staying true to her values.
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