Who is Kamala Harris? Even in her new book, an answer remains elusive | Opinion
Kamala Harris has led a complicated political career. The daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, Harris was the first Black woman and first South Asian woman to serve as Vice President of the United States. She was a U.S Senator from California, Attorney General of California and District Attorney of San Francisco.
Then, suddenly, late in the summer of 2024, she was thrust into the role as the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party when Joe Biden declared that he wouldn’t run. Harris was soon crowned the superstar of her party before suffering a decisive electoral defeat at the hands of Donald Trump.
Now comes her memoir, “107 days,” where Harris posits herself outsider despite her resume and the fortune raised on behalf of her failed presidential campaign last year.
Her story feels like a political tragedy because her run for POTUS was handicapped from the beginning.
“In 107 days, I didn’t have enough time to show how much more I would do to help them than he ever would,” Harris writes of Trump. “And that makes me immensely sad.”
There are other moments in the book where she seeks sympathy from the reader for not running against the parts of Biden’s agenda that were clearly more unpopular with voters than Harris and other Democrats understood. In a significant moment of her campaign, Harris was a guest on the daytime talk show “The View,” where she had a big opportunity to tell a big audience how she would be different from Biden. She acknowledges in the book that failing to do so in that moment was a blunder.
“Why. Didn’t. I. Separate. Myself. From. Joe Biden?,” Harris wrote.
Harris lathers on self-deprecation throughout the book in a way to convey the weight she had on her shoulders, but reveals the arrogance she and other Democrats felt during her failed race against Trump.
“Why were we feeling so confident in a race that had never shifted out of tossup territory?,” Harris pondered in her book.
The entire country wondered that, too.
The vulnerability Harris displays in the book is commendable, but it’s hard to fully empathize with someone who just a year ago had fundraised over $1 billion and earned the support of celebrities like Taylor Swift and Beyonce.
Sure, Harris lost an election that was primarily seen as a fight for democracy, but she allowed herself to represent the Democratic Party’s interests rather than her own. She had more photo-ops with Republican outcast Liz Cheney than she did conversations with working-class people. It became increasingly evident that she simply filled a void left by Biden, but offered nothing more than that from voters who deserved more .
This book, however, starts Harris’ journey to win over America by presenting her true self.
Harris knows that politics is all about identity, and right now she wants to take this moment to show people that the last election was not a failure for her, but a lesson that taught her the political system isn’t working for Americans.
Kamala Harris, the outsider
Harris decided that her campaign theme was joy. At each event, she delivered a speech that sprinkled in the message of moving past Trump politics and into an era absent of fearmongering and hatred. She offered a different type of leadership, where happiness was evident and empathy was a common action.
An election loss and months to recover from it later, Harris appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to discuss her new book. Her vibe was very different from a year ago. She seemed intentional and serious, not her usual happy self.
“Recently I made the decision that I just — for now — I don’t want to go back in the system,” Harris when asked about her decision not to run for California governor. “I think it’s broken.”
This is a hard contrast from a year ago when Harris met the thunderous applause of crowds on the campaign trail with her radiant smile and a message that there is still hope for this country.
Now, it’s not all doom and gloom. The former vice president’s new stoic persona is calculated, a part of a transition to becoming someone who shares in the anger and frustrations of Americans.
And, it was not an accident that Harris wanted the public to know California Gov. Gavin Newsom blew her off after the news broke that Biden’s would ot seek re-election.
“Hiking. Will call back. (He never did.)”
That Harris took the time to publicly reveal a darker side of Newsom’s character may signal a future run at the presidency, which is my guess. She went out of her way to put Newsom in a negative light.
The challenge for Harris will still be the one she struggled with for 107 days in 2024: getting out of Biden’s shadow.
“My feelings for him were grounded in warmth and loyalty,” Harris writes, “but they had become complicated, over time, with hurt and disappointment.”
A book alone won’t be enough for Harris to break out of her career politician shell. She will have to be raw and reach to Americans where they are, never preaching from a pedestal but sharing in their struggle.
This story was originally published September 25, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Who is Kamala Harris? Even in her new book, an answer remains elusive | Opinion."
