Kamala Harris still has no idea why she lost to Donald Trump

PART 1: Her (surprisingly honest) memoir should terrify Democrats. She worked hard, had money and media support, made decent tactical choices - and lost. She wasn't the problem. So what was?

(PART ONE OF TWO)

The Democrats are in even more trouble than anyone thinks.

Since last November, the left has eagerly sought excuses for Kamala Harris’s loss to Donald Trump. With “Russian collusion” off the table, the post-mortems have focused on Harris’s supposed flaws as a candidate or the theory that — as Bernie Sanders argued again days ago — Harris did not run far enough to the left.

But Harris’s batty, heartfelt new memoir of the 2024 campaign, 107 Days, makes both of those cases even more implausible than they already were. All that remains is the truth of a party whose policies are ever more unpopular with most Americans.

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(Plausible truths. For pennies a day.)

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I picked up 107 Days on the tiny chance it had evidence that could help Berenson v Biden.¹ I wasn’t expecting to like Harris - or a fun read. Most political autobiographies are boring exercises in positioning for future races, book-length campaign speeches.

But Harris is apparently still too bruised from losing to hold her tongue. The weirdest, funniest moment in 107 Days comes as she lets loose at her husband, Doug, for failing to celebrate her 60th birthday when they meet in a Philadelphia hotel:

I was looking forward to a special evening with Doug… [and] wondering what he’d planned for our evening. The simple answer: Nothing. Not a thing…

She gets even angrier when she sees Doug has tried to repurpose an anniversary present for her birthday. The final straw comes when he is watching television in another room in their suite and doesn’t hear her as she asks him for a bath towel:

I called his phone.

His answer: a casual “What’s up?”

Really?! It was a bridge too far.

And then we got into it.

Theoretically, Harris is sharing the birthday night disaster because it ends with her and Doug reminding each other that they’re in the fight together. In reality, though, she sounds like she’s still torqued he didn’t have anything planned for her 60th.

Which is reasonable enough, until one recalls her birthday was Oct. 20 — barely two weeks before Election Day. Both she and Doug had been on the trail for months. Even if Doug had had the time or energy to plan a big night, he presumably figured his wife would just want to relax.

But, as she writes at the beginning of the chapter, “When I was growing up, birthdays were a very big deal.”

COME ON, DOUG! YOUR BABY JUST TURNED THE BIG 6-0, AND YOU CAN’T EVEN FIGURE OUT WHAT SHE WANTS FOR DINNER?!?

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(Wait, how many days?)

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Kamala Harris fell just short of becoming the first female American president, a unique milestone. She is the first black woman to be vice-president.

Yet she’s devoting space in her memoir to this.

And the effect is awesome. You want relatable? What could be more relatable than Kamala losing it because Doug was watching the Mets and didn’t get her a towel? Who needs couples counseling when you have a memoir?

It’s no wonder that Harris is still hurting.

She wanted desperately to be president. Unlike Joe Biden, she wasn’t suffering from undiagnosed dementia, and she hit the road hard. 107 Days is filled with late nights and early mornings and large and energetic rallies.

She prepped fiercely for her lone debate with Trump in September, and she handled him reasonably well. Trump refused to debate her again, though she pressed for a follow-up. She didn’t make any big gaffes, with a single, very telling exception.

She was not a truly magnetic campaigner like Bill Clinton (or Trump), but she was the best candidate the Democrats had run since Barack Obama, more likeable than Hillary Clinton — or Biden. Most of all, Harris believed in herself and believed she was going to win.

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Harris had structural advantages too.

Biden’s decision to quit the race provoked massive enthusiasm on the left as Democratic politicians and donors realized they would no longer have to try to drag Biden across the line. She raised $81 million in a single day after he quit. Through November, she would essentially have more money than she could spend. The legacy media was hugely on her side, of course, rooting for her more or less openly.

Unlike Hillary Clinton, who was overconfident and took the “blue wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin for granted, Harris knew how close the race would be. She did not waste time trying to run up the score, focusing her money and energy on those states and the handful of others truly in play.

Nor did the fact that Harris became the candidate only in July matter as much as it would have in a typical presidential race. Trump had been stuck defending himself in court for the winter and spring, cases that drained his bankroll and stole his attention.

And even after the assassination attempt that almost took Trump’s life in Pennsylvania in July, he remained generally unpopular, with more than half of Americans viewing him unfavorably.

By mid-September, after her debate with Trump, Harris had a small but notable edge in that crucial category. She had a slight overall net favorable rating, while Trump was almost 10 percentage points underwater. And she was slightly ahead in most polls.

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(The New Yorker’s “Roller Coaster” cover, from mid-August 2024, as Democratic enthusiasm for Harris neared its peak)

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But she couldn’t hold her lead.

It wasn’t that Harris didn’t have enough time. She had too much.

By mid-October, Trump had the momentum again. By late October, despite everything she’d done, Trump was clearly ahead. He extended his lead day-by-day and managed to sweep ALL of the swing states and the popular vote, a small but decisive victory.

Harris knew in her heart something was wrong, even if she couldn’t fix it.

The most telling moment she recounts in 107 Days came on Oct. 15, five days before her birthday fiasco, three weeks before Election Day. The air was already leaking from her balloon. She was on her plane, talking to reporters, when one “furrowed his brow and asked, “What do you think is going on?”

We locked eyes for a long moment. Then I answered with the simple truth:

“I don’t know.”

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(The simple truth: I need you! For pennies a day.)

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She didn’t know.

If 107 Days is any indication, she still doesn’t.

And neither, it seems, does her party.

(END OF PART ONE)

1. Rob Flaherty, the deputy campaign manager for the Biden-Harris and Harris-Walz tickets, was the White House director of digital strategy in 2021. He’s a defendant in Berenson v Biden, my dismissed and soon-to-be-appealed lawsuit over the White House conspiracy to force Twitter to ban me that year.