Former Vice President Kamala Harris published a memoir of her thwarted dash for the Oval Office last week, and it caused quite the hubbub in Washington (until our Felon In Chief and his Martini Martinet bombed in front of a command audience of every general, admiral, and space marshall in the U.S. military).
No doubt, books like 107 Days will be of great value to future historians trying to figure out how American democracy came to a tragic end. But for now, it joins a select few literary tomes by presidential runners-up — Hilary Clinton's What Happened and Richard Nixon's Six Crises come to mind — laboring to deflect the blame for coming up short in the Electoral College.
In so doing, Harris steps on a few toes.
Would we be better off had President Biden recognized his declining faculties? Well, duh. Nearly everybody in the Democratic Party wishes that Dean Phillips and Jason Palmer weren't the only ones willing to step up and advocate for a little age discrimination.
Would it have helped if Tim Walz had gone more forcefully for JD Vance's jugular in their televised debate? Well, maybe. But if you pick the Governor of Minnesota as your running mate, don't be surprised if you get a heap o' Minnesota Nice.
Harris explains that she passed over Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro because he was too interested in the top job someday. Which is a hoot, because Harris herself was a rival to Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination in 2020. Besides, I don't know where she could possibly have found a Democrat qualified to be Vice President with no interest in redecorating the Oval Office.
Her reasoning against naming Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as her running mate was that while she likes him personally and politically, she didn't think U.S. voters were ready to elect the ticket of a Black-Asian woman with a Jewish husband and a gay man with a husband of his own.
Buttigieg has responded that he was surprised by Harris's reasoning, and believes in "giving Americans more credit" in accepting the possibility of having a First and Second Gentleman at the same time. Harris might have had a point, however; the Trump campaign was able to successfully attack Harris as being "for they/them" even without Buttigieg on the ticket.
107 Days also includes swipes at Democrats Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, J.B. Pritzger, and Mark Kelly. Since just about every Democrat I've named in these paragraphs is considering a run for the presidency in 2028 (maybe not Joe Biden — I sure hope not), I'm pretty sure that Kamala Harris is not on their short lists for their own running mate.
Not that she'd be interested in the vice presidency.
Thomas Marshall, John Nance Garner, and Selina Meyer could tell you why.
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