I earnestly feel sorry for Kamala after reading this book. Despite my opinion of her politics, I do give myself room to simply feel for her. Her loss was traumatizing and 107 Days makes it very clear that it wasn't just traumatizing for us, but it was traumatizing for the person running against an embodiment of authoritarianism. I wanted to review this book from a more progressive lens because I feel like a lot of progressives actively dislike Kamala, what she stands for, and dismissed the very idea of this book. I did too initially but I've learned a long time ago how reactionary tendencies, even from Progressives, are effectively useless. There's always something to glean or learn from people you maybe polarized towards. That's not to say this is a good book, it's only passively interesting if you just want Kamala's perspective on her campaign. The book is mainly for loyal democrats and liberals still coping with the loss although I hate to say it does a very poor job at soothing that pain.
The one thing about the book that flies off the page is that she speaks with a type of energy that is very ten toes down in its delivery. I've come to recognize this in the older figures in my life like my mother, mostly Gen X and up. Not to say Millennials aren't showing signs of this too. There's often a sense of world weariness that is of course valid but can also prevent them from being able to do real analysis of their own beliefs. Unfortunately, this in turn makes the book more of a “this happened and that happened” without too much of her actions being under a microscope. I tried to balance this with the fact that she is just focusing on the 107 days themselves (until the very end), but she doesn't just focus in on those days, she occasionally has asides about the current day politics that resulted from the election. It's very much playing into her current persona of being the “I told you so” lady even if by the end of the book she says she thinks that's a bad thing. The preceding portions of the book does not do her last chapter any favors because the “system is broken" narrative found there, isn't something well weaved into the 107 Days portion of the book. It's effectively an uneven two halves that poorly inform one another even if I can see the throughlines.
The lack of any real analysis means she's not attempting to be accountable for her decisions much at all. There may be a few situations where she felt like she may have needed to say or do something different but a lot of the unpopular rhetoric, wording or stances that she made during her campaign get a passing reference and then we move right along. Time is spent more on how much certain disagreeable points of her campaign weren't the nail in the coffin the media claims they were but then not explicitly bringing up the cumulative damage they all caused. From her lack of a response to Trump's attacks on trans people in ads, to her flub not distinguishing herself from Biden, to putting Liz Cheney out there for a rally, all felt as though she recognized the problematic aspects of those decisions but decides to not look any further. In fact, a lot of the book is playing this interesting game of throwing a rock and hiding the hand. One of the biggest bits of subtext from this book is that Biden and Co. did not do a good job in supporting her, but you would probably have to torture her to get her to say that explicitly. I only picked up on it because she must mention how loyal she is to Biden every time he does something that ultimately hurts her and/or the campaign.
“The System is broken!” is already something I and many other marginalized people understand almost innately, but for some reason it took a truncated campaign and the feeling of everyone working against her for Kamala to get there. She’s a true-blue believer and a big part of this writing is her effectively denying the system is broken for 80% of the book until the very end. She does unintentionally show how connected the Democratic Party is to wealth and celebrity. There’s always a name to drop, places to be, money raised and spent. Things that come into conflict with the very thing she claims to be fighting for. She does not wrestle with the contradictions much at all. The only bit of class consciousness is her realizing that Corporations, Politicians, etc. are not going to protect the Democracy she holds dear after they effectively bent the knee to Trump before and after the election. The internal politics of the Democratic party was just not willing to meet the moment, and we can see that more clearly today with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, but it's made very clear throughout the book that Biden, Kamala, and the remainder of the Democratic party weren't in good shape to take on Trump 2.0 even with everything to lose.
I said on my Bluesky account that I felt like Kamala Harris was unqualified to be president, and some folks took umbrage with that. To be fair, it seems like I'm disparaging a Black Woman who is clearly qualified if we were just going off her political resume, but I think what really qualifies a president is more than that. It also doesn’t help that her flaws were obscured by the fact that she was running against Trump. She ended up losing due to a combination of the energy Trump had post his assassination attempt, not being able overcome the barriers/self-sabotage that she herself set up and the barriers/sabotage around her set up by her colleagues in the Democratic Party that all coalesced to allow Trump to squeak by narrowly. One of her more lucid moments at the end of the book is that she doesn’t pessimistically blame the voter, something that people have done both in 2016 and 2024. She recognizes that third of the voters didn’t vote and sees that as a rejection of Trump.
If she were a bit more honest with herself (and maybe she knows this but couldn’t put it on the record), she should have seen that as a rejection of both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. To me that speaks to a disqualification that's not simply based on her background or accomplishments but more so based on an accurate appraisal of her and by extension the Democratic party. There’s a lack of political will and instinct that a portion of Americans are sniffing out. There was no message other than beat Trump. Nothing about her campaign was motivating. Whatever good policy was there, was completely undercut by the lack of political adeptness. Those non-voters were tired of voting pragmatically. She's a very likable person, at least as presented by the book (and the coconut tree meme is still solid) but politically she’s just not that adept and if we're being honest to ourselves, we should have known this after her presidential primary loss in 2019. She's been campaigning for president much longer than the 107 days that graces the cover of the book. She was never our choice, and for that I feel sorry for her.