By Cliff Potts

Kamala Harris’s new memoir 107 Days is being hailed by many as a candid reckoning of her 2024 campaign. But read between the lines: it is largely a political theater piece — a narrative designed to make us feel for her, to see her as unfairly constrained, betrayed, and undervalued. What it is not is a roadmap for post-fascist renewal or a serious break from neoliberal centrism.

Here’s the slimy trick: the more you empathize with the protagonist, the less you question her framework.

What 107 Days Does Do: The Sympathy Build

1. Blame, not transformation

Harris devotes large sections of the book to blaming Biden, his staff, and internal party dynamics. She calls it “reckless” to have left the decision of his 2024 candidacy solely to himself and Jill Biden (Associated Press, 2025). She laments that his debate collapse forced her into a scramble (The Atlantic, 2025).

By centering that narrative, she frames Biden as the problem — not the governing model. The reader subtly absorbs that “if only Joe had stepped back sooner,” better outcomes would have followed. But that’s not the same as rejecting the policies and structures that allowed the far right to festoon and exploit our institutions.

2. Confessional humility

She owns “mistakes” — the ill-timed comment on The View, the overcautious vice presidential pick, staff friction (The Guardian, 2025a). That makes her appear human, fallible, self-aware. It’s a classic tactic: by admitting flaws, you shield yourself from harsher critique. But note: the flaws she confesses are tactical, not ideological. She doesn’t confess to the error of pursuing neoliberal governance, only the error of execution.

3. Emotional narrative over structural vision

The few emotional passages — such as her birthday frustration with her husband Doug during the collapse of the campaign — are the scenes that linger (The Guardian, 2025b). Those personal stories are meant to anchor sympathy: the exhausted spouse, the betrayed colleague, the underestimated Black woman who kept pushing. But they’re not coupled with serious engagements on how to rebuild democracy, break corporate power, or transform institutions.

4. Distance without rupture

Though she criticizes Biden’s decision-making and staff behavior, Harris stops short of a full-throated rejection of Bidenism. In 107 Days she insists that while Biden’s debates exposed cracks, he remained competent on his best day (The Guardian, 2025b). She refuses the conspiratorial route of claiming hidden deceit, instead painting her path as constrained by loyalty: “I knew it would come off as self-serving” if she urged him to drop out (The Atlantic, 2025).

This is a soft reset, not a rupture.

What 107 Days Doesn’t Do — And What That Silence Reveals

1. No structural critique

There is barely a mention of how neoliberalism, deregulation, outsourcing, or concentrated corporate power have hollowed out democratic institutions, alienated voters, and built the foundations for authoritarian surge. The sincerity of personal betrayal is clear; the sincerity of systemic diagnosis is absent.

2. No economic reimagining

Rarely does she propose audacious plans — not nationalizing sectors, not bold financial or tax restructuring, not industrial policy shifts beyond modest competitive incentives. There is no argument that capitalism itself must be redirected. The wars, the inequality, the corporate dominance remain background noise, not front-and-center targets for transformation.

3. No real break from donor class politics

The book discusses internal communications, staff disputes, optics, and narrative control — but doesn’t dwell on how her campaign was (or was not) compromised by large political donors or financial interests. The theater of the campaign is foregrounded; the theater of power relations and class structure is sidelined.

4. Ambiguous future commitment

She never fully commits to what she will do next — she leaves options open (Wikipedia, 2025). That hedging protects her from overpromise, but it also reveals she is more interested in positioning than in anchoring a movement.

Why This Matters: Sympathy, Support, and the Trap of Restoration

Here’s the danger: 107 Days is built to make you root for Harris. You feel for her, see her struggle, sense the wounds she claims she endured. That empathy can lead you to trust her more — to offer her the benefit of the doubt as she remakes the party. And once that trust is extended, it becomes harder to push her away from default neoliberal frameworks.

But we cannot afford that. Because restarting the neoliberal status quo in 2029 will be fatal. Under that playbook:

  • We’ll tinker while the climate collapses.
  • We’ll regulate lightly while monopolies accumulate.
  • We’ll negotiate with power while inequality metastasizes.
  • We’ll preserve institutions that are already weak, hollowed, and manipulated.

Sympathy without demands is precisely how political elites survive crises. We must reject the posture that we forgive or temper demands in exchange for “realism.” We need maximal pressure, maximal demands, maximal accountability — especially if she intends to reenter power.

So share this essay. Use it. Don’t quietly nod as Harris positions herself as “Biden’s wronged successor.” Call it out: she’s playing the PR game — emotional framing — while keeping the neoliberal chassis intact.

We don’t need a nicer version of what’s failed. We need rupture, repair, and a forward-march. The sympathy play cannot be our sedative.

References

Associated Press. (2025, September 22). Kamala Harris says Biden’s 2024 run was “reckless” in new book. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/473ca75fb9fb5fa157a788bcf3ecc941

The Atlantic. (2025, September 22). Exclusive excerpt: Kamala Harris on Biden, 2024, and the limits of loyalty. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/09/kamala-harris-107-days-excerpt/684150

The Guardian. (2025a, September 23). Kamala Harris’s new book “107 Days”: Key takeaways. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/23/kamala-harris-book-takeaways-107-days

The Guardian. (2025b, September 22). 107 Days by Kamala Harris review — no closure, no hope. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/sep/22/107-days-by-kamala-harris-review-no-closure-no-hope

Wikipedia. (2025). 107 Days. In Wikipedia. Retrieved September 25, 2025, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/107_Days

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