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\n By Kamala Harris. Simon & Schuster.\n <\/p>\n
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It\u2019s not surprising Harris would write a book about her uniquely hamstrung campaign and her gutting, history-defining loss. Hillary Clinton did something similar after she lost in 2016 with her book, What Happened<\/a>. But Clinton\u2019s book came out when we were collectively still stunned at the prospect of a Trump presidency. Harris\u2019 book is being released into a world where everyone knows exactly what\u2019s happening, but no one really knows what to do about it. Harris, it seems, has no real answers either. \u201cI wanted a seat at the table. I wanted to make change from inside the system,\u201d she writes. \u201cToday I\u2019m no longer sure about that.\u201d<\/p>\n If you plug your ears and cover your eyes and scream as loud as possible, you can read much of the book as if you live in a world where Harris won. Nearly every chapter is but one day of her campaign, and several of them end with motivational pablum. On Day 106, she leads a crowd in a rallying cry that when we fight, \u201cwe win!\u201d But \u201cwe\u201d lost, quite famously, didn\u2019t we! Such is the key trouble with 107 Days, and books like it, where the politician author is unable or unwilling to adjudicate their own failings. What\u2019s the point of reading about a political failure if there\u2019s nothing to learn from it for our shaky future?<\/p>\n The book spans her entire campaign, but it\u2019s mostly over by the time she loses and certifies Trump\u2019s reelection. Because the book is in a daily diary format, there\u2019s no room for introspection or hindsight; instead, we\u2019re left with little details about debate prep and Biden gaffes. A more interesting book starts at her loss, instead of leading us through the heady campaign that, frankly, doesn\u2019t matter anymore. The despair of living through this Trump term makes it clear how little her campaign mattered: the little decisions around ads, around slogans, around debate sound bites. If she doesn\u2019t have a vision for the political path forward, the least she could do is tell us what it feels like for her to watch the carnage unfold.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not the book Harris wrote. Instead, she leans into the same half-hearted rhetoric that lost her the election in the first place. She says she was merely \u201cambivalent\u201d about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and then offers this literary pivot of the century: \u201cWhat I\u2019m not ambivalent about is Israel\u2019s security.\u201d It\u2019s a laughable sentiment even in Israel, where many locals want an immediate military de-escalation<\/a>. This MFA-dropout prose reads like snippets from a Veep episode deemed too inglorious for even Selina Meyer.<\/p>\n It\u2019s impossible to read 107 Days without looking for mentions of Gaza, or specifically, for Harris to recognize how much her campaign suffered for its tacit support of the genocide<\/a>. Still, you won\u2019t find her recognizing that perhaps a more strident support of Palestinian people would have won her more Arab American votes<\/a>. \u201cFor any enduring peace, we have to let go of extreme rhetoric on both sides,\u201d she writes. \u201cI wanted to acknowledge the complexity, nuance, and history of the region, but it seemed very few people had the appetite for that or the willingness to hold two tragic narratives in their mind at the same time, to grieve for human suffering both Israeli and Palestinian.\u201d The blame is placed squarely on the protester or the voter\u2014or, as was her problem ultimately, the nonvoter.<\/p>\n It\u2019s details like this that Harris wants to hide in the folds of schlocky writing. It works only if you haven\u2019t been paying attention for the past few years. Harris writes about a moment a few days into her campaign, where she spoke to the press about Gaza: \u201cTo everyone who has been calling for a ceasefire and to everyone who yearns for peace, I see you and I hear you. Let\u2019s get the deal done.\u201d It sounds nice, if you\u2019re under some impression that this impassioned speech led to any kind of deal at all. Very West Wing!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Rock\u2019s New Movie Is His Big Oscar Play. There\u2019s a Problem. <\/p>\n Americans Can No Longer Do Golf Right. That\u2019s Brutal. <\/p>\n The 25 Greatest Picture Books of the Century <\/p>\n What, Exactly, Is One Battle After Another About? Seeing It Twice Provided Some Answers. If you\u2019re looking for a clear villain in 107 Days, the closest you get might be Dr. Jill Biden. She\u2019s written about sparingly but only as the overprotective, sometimes insulting first lady who was blinded by her need to protect her husband\u2019s political memory. There are very few real revelations in the book, but one small one is Harris\u2019 husband losing his temper after Dr. Biden asked if he and Harris were still loyal to them. \u201cThey hide you away for four years, give you impossible, shit jobs, don\u2019t correct the record when those tasks are mischaracterized, never fight back when you\u2019re attacked, never praise your accomplishments,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd still, they have to ask if we\u2019re loyal?\u201d It\u2019s a great question left unanswered by the book, and by Harris\u2019 own political ideology. Loyal to who: party, country, or political iconoclast?<\/p>\n As with most projects after a failed election bid, 107 Days is mostly preoccupied with protecting Harris\u2019 legacy, and by extension, the Democrats. She seems quietly radicalized by her loss, though more into seeking different employment, not in a way that\u2019s changed her core beliefs about the party she dedicated much of her life to. She knows that the strategy set before her by Biden\u2019s camp, and then by her own team, failed; she seems unwilling to admit that she was responsible for so much of that failure.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n Luke Winkie <\/a><\/p>\n The ultimate thesis of 107 Days is similar to what Harris told Stephen Colbert<\/a> on The Late Show last month: \u201cI don\u2019t want to go back in the system. I think it\u2019s broken.\u201d She isn\u2019t seeking reelection and instead wants to \u201ctalk with people and I don\u2019t want it to be transactional where I\u2019m asking for their vote.\u201d<\/p>\n She\u2019s right, but she\u2019s late. Harris comes to the conclusion that the system is broken only when her efforts to ascend to its highest reaches are fully rejected. It\u2019s only through her own ambition that she sees the flaw in the design of America: She was good and smart and charming and beautiful and it still wasn\u2019t enough. But in the same interview, Colbert asks her who the new leaders of the Democrats are, and Harris refuses to give a name\u2014she doesn\u2019t even mention Zohran Mamdani, the socialist candidate for mayor in New York and target of Trump\u2019s ire, to whom she\u2019s only given a lukewarm endorsement<\/a>.<\/p>\n Months after her loss, Harris still makes the same mistakes about what she thinks Americans want. Maybe she doesn\u2019t actually understand where she got it all wrong, and seeking insight from her is a futile mission. There\u2019s always something to learn from history\u2019s losers, but not if they\u2019re still invested in their own myth-making.<\/p>\n Get the best of movies, TV, books, music, and more.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What is Kamala Harris\u2019 new book, 107 Days, supposed to be exactly? Is it a memoir about her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[353,49,48,22158,75,16944,714,1130],"class_list":{"0":"post-180128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-democrats","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-kamala-harris","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-slate-plus"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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