Kamala Harris announced she will not be running for Governor of California in 2026<\/a>, but she did drop a new memoir<\/a>, keeping speculation about her 2028 Presidential aspirations alive.<\/p>\n The NYT summarizes her activities<\/a> since losing the 2024 presidential election to Donald Trump: <\/p>\n Ms. Harris has spent the months since November largely out of the public eye, delivering a paid speech in Australia and appearing at weddings of some of her famous friends.<\/p>\n She was in England last week for the wedding of the Apple heiress Eve Jobs, whose mother, Laurene Powell Jobs, is a close friend. In June, she attended the wedding of Hillary Clinton\u2019s top aide and the son of a Democratic megadonor. In May, she was spotted at the Met Gala in New York.<\/p>\n During that time, Ms. Harris was also largely absent from the broader Democratic discussions about the party\u2019s future. While the party\u2019s ambitious governors, members of Congress and various Biden administration officials have appeared on podcasts, toured the country and held town hall meetings in Republican districts, Ms. Harris has offered no explanation for why she lost the 2024 race, and she has not presented any beginnings of a road map for how Democrats might claw back power.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Her book announcement<\/a> was a minor classic in its way, for those of us who enjoy parsing badly crafted spin at least. Enjoy:<\/p>\n Just over a year ago I launched my campaign for president of the United States.<\/p>\n 107 days traveling the country, fighting for our future. The shortest presidential campaign in modern history.<\/p>\n It was intense, high stakes, and deeply personal for me and for so many of you. <\/p>\n Since leaving office I\u2019ve spent a lot of time reflecting on those days, talking with my team, my family, my friends and pulling my thoughts together <\/p>\n In essence, writing a journal that is this book: 107 days <\/p>\n With candor and reflection I\u2019ve written a behind-the-scenes account of that journey. I believe there\u2019s value in sharing what I saw. what I learned and what i know it will take to move forward.<\/p>\n In writing this book, one truth kept coming back to me: Sometimes the fight takes a while. <\/p>\n But I remain full of hope and I remain clear eyed. I will never stop fighting to make our country reflect the very best of its ideals. Always on behalf of the people for being in this fight with me. And I cannot wait for you to read this.<\/p>\n Take care.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Her publisher has a slightly different take<\/a> on the book:<\/p>\n Jonathan Karp, the chief executive of Simon & Schuster, said Harris\u2019s memoir \u201cis not a typical political tome,\u201d just as Harris \u2014 the first woman to serve as vice president and the first woman of color to run to be nominated as a major party\u2019s presidential nominee \u2014 was not a typical candidate.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s closer in spirit to \u2018The West Wing\u2019 or \u2018Rocky,\u2019\u201d Karp said. \u201cIt reads like a suspense novel.\u201d<\/p>\n To give the memoir a novelistic feel, Harris worked with the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Geraldine Brooks, an unusual choice for a collaborator on a political book. She also made an extremely cringe appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert<\/a> to promote the book. <\/p>\n And as much as I\u2019d enjoy parsing her misstatements on Colbert, there\u2019s no time for that.<\/p>\n Instead I need to document a few things about Harris\u2019 record as California Attorney General, as a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, vice-president from 2021 to 2025, and her management of those 107 days as the Democratic standard bearer for President in 2024.<\/p>\n I\u2019d mention her tenure as a U.S. Senator from California from 2017 to 2020, but there honestly isn\u2019t much worth mentioning.<\/p>\n Yves Smith summed up Harris\u2019 record<\/a> as California Attorney General for Naked Capitalism when she announced her 2020 run for the Democratic Presidential nomination:<\/p>\n Kamala Harris\u2019 presidential campaign has barely made its official start, and she\u2019s continuing to show her unfitness for the job. Martin Luther King would be rolling in his grave if he were to learn that a former big city and then state prosecutor, with no known history of protesting but an anti-minorities rap sheet that includes criminalizing truancy, enthusiastically prosecuting drug-related activity, and pushed to keep nonviolent \u201csecond-strike\u201d convicts in prison to assure California a continued supply of cheap labor, was misusing his name to try to burnish her sorry record.<\/p>\n If you missed them, these reviews of Harris\u2019 record as a prosecutor should disabuse you of the notion that she\u2019s a friend of the downtrodden:<\/p>\n Readers may recall that last week, we addressed one Harris Big Lie about her record, that she was a big defender of abused homeowners by virtue of having gotten a less terrible deal than 48 other states in the 2012 National Mortgage Settlement<\/a>, which we\u2019ve regularly described as a \u201cget out of liability almost free card\u201d for the big mortgage servicers. Her lack of a commitment to homeowners, and her pliancy to big money interests, was confirmed by her failure to investigate One West Bank, ignoring a 2013 memo from attorneys in her office flagging the appearance of \u201cwidespread misconduct.\u201d Her complacency was rewarded via One West\u2019s former CEO, Steve Mnuchin, making Harris the recipient of his lone donation to a Democratic party Senate candidate.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Her attempts to explain away her failure to prosecute Mnuchin<\/a> were notably feeble, even by Harris\u2019 low standards: <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a decision my office made,\u201d she said, in response to questions from The Hill<\/a> shortly after being sworn in as California\u2019s newest U.S. senator.<\/p>\n \u201cWe went and we followed the facts and the evidence, and it\u2019s a decision my office made,\u201d Harris said. \u201cWe pursued it just like any other case. We go and we take a case wherever the facts lead us.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Nonetheless, Harris launched her presidential quest in 2020 and had an army of allies ready to accuse progressives who were critical of Harris\u2019 record of racism. Briahna Joy Gray documented this at the time<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2026progressive critiques of Harris were met with swift and unyielding hostility. After a Mic article<\/a> documented the lack of left-wing enthusiasm for a Harris candidacy, investigative journalist Victoria A. Brownsworth suggested that a better headline for the article would be: \u201cKamala Harris, biracial senator and former Attorney General of the most populous state, faces misogynist white men defaming her.\u201d (This despite the fact that every critic quoted in the piece was female, and one was a woman of color.) <\/p>\n Center for American Progress president Neera Tanden, a close Clinton ally and frequent defender of the Democratic Party, declared<\/a> she found it \u201codd\u201d that \u201cthese folks\u201d (meaning Bernie Sanders supporters) \u201chave [it] in for Kamala Harris and Cory Booker\u201d in particular. \u201cHmmmm,\u201d she said, implying that criticisms of Harris and Booker were racially motivated. MSNBC host Joy Ann Reid said the Mic article simply reported the opinions of \u201c3 alt-left activists,\u201d \u201calt-left\u201d being a term used to brand leftists as racist analogues of the neo-Nazi alt-right.<\/p>\n In Cosmopolitan, Brittney Cooper wrote<\/a> that the left in general, but in particular the \u201cSanders Left,\u201d \u201chas a black-woman problem,\u201d a charge I\u2019ve addressed elsewhere<\/a>. Cooper said that those criticizing Harris \u201cthink that black women who care about establishment politics lack vision\u201d and that the debate \u201cisn\u2019t about Harris, but about the emotional and political labor that black women are expected to do to save America\u2019s soul.\u201d \u201cAngry white Sanders voters,\u201d she said, must \u201cget off [Harris\u2019s] back.\u201d In large part, responses to skepticism about Harris have simply dismissed the substance of the analysis, instead suggesting a \u201ctargeting\u201d of Harris because of her gender and\/or race.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Her disastrous 2020 run for the presidency was bad enough to end most careers, as Politico chronicled in a juicy campaign post-mortem<\/a> that zeroed in on her Achilles heel as a national candidate \u2014 a complete inability to build a functional team:<\/p>\n What\u2019s impossible to assess is how Harris would have fared with a functional team around her<\/a>. She built a precarious structure of advisers at the top \u2014 a kind of team of rivals whose quiet snarks about each other grew louder in recent months \u2014 and she allowed senior aides to throw out ideas without designating them a defined area of responsibility.<\/p>\n Harris\u2019 advisers Ace Smith and Sean Clegg launched her with a focus on the back half of the primary calendar \u2014 namely South Carolina and California \u2014 then pivoted hard back to Iowa only when it was too late.<\/p>\n By the summer, Harris\u2019 team, which by then included Jim Margolis, prodded her toward unity-focused themes that centered on kitchen table economic issues. She never really bought in. And that came through as she resisted really selling it.<\/p>\n On one side was Harris\u2019 sister, campaign chair Maya Harris, who recommended many hires and fed Kamala\u2019s insecurities about the liability of being a prosecutor in today\u2019s Democratic Party \u2014and given her own mixed record. On the other was campaign manager Juan Rodriguez and his partners at the San Francisco-based political firm SCRB, including Smith and Clegg.<\/p>\n Even mundane tasks like agreeing on the candidate\u2019s schedule proved maddening for aides at her Baltimore headquarters. Rodriguez and others failed to anticipate the dramatic drop-off in fundraising, bringing on new staff just a few weeks before laying off dozens in early states and headquarters. Staffers said they had been warning for months of the dire financial situation and worried that Harris herself was unaware.<\/p>\n After the layoffs, many of the aides at the middle to lower levels of the campaign said they weren\u2019t so much siding with one camp or the other as they were throwing up their hands in exasperation at everyone. They weren\u2019t being communicated a plan. They didn\u2019t know if one existed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Instead of being exiled for her abysmal performance, Harris failed upward, thanks to Biden\u2019s identity-based<\/a> Vice-Presidential selection criteria<\/a>. <\/p>\n Once in office as Vice-President, Harris repeated the pattern and by June 2021, the squabbling inside her office reached the press, again from Politico<\/a>:<\/p>\n Harris\u2019 team is experiencing low morale, porous lines of communication and diminished trust among aides and senior officials. Much of the frustration internally is directed at Tina Flournoy, Harris\u2019 chief of staff, a veteran of Democratic politics who began working for her earlier this year.<\/p>\n In interviews, 22 current and former vice presidential aides, administration officials and associates of Harris and Biden described a tense and at times dour office atmosphere. Aides and allies said Flournoy, in an apparent effort to protect Harris, has instead created an insular environment where ideas are ignored or met with harsh dismissals and decisions are dragged out. Often, they said, she refuses to take responsibility for delicate issues and blames staffers for the negative results that ensue.<\/p>\n While much of the ire is aimed at Harris\u2019 chief, two administration officials said the VP herself also bears responsibility for the way her office is run. \u201cIt all starts at the top,\u201d said one of the administration officials\u2026\u201cPeople are thrown under the bus from the very top, there are short fuses and it\u2019s an abusive environment,\u201d said another person with direct knowledge of how Harris\u2019 office is run. \u201cIt\u2019s not a healthy environment and people often feel mistreated. It\u2019s not a place where people feel supported but a place where people feel treated like s\u2014.\u201d<\/p>\n The dysfunction in the VP\u2019s ranks threatens to complicate the White House\u2019s carefully crafted image as a place staffed by a close-knit group of professionals working in concert to advance the president\u2019s agenda. It\u2019s pronounced enough that members of the president\u2019s own team have taken notice and are concerned about the way Harris\u2019 staffers are treated.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n All of this was merely prelude to what will likely go down as Kamala Harris\u2019 most singular accomplishment: raising and spending $1.5 billion in a disastrous presidential run,<\/a> losing every swing state and ending the campaign an alleged $20 million in debt<\/a>:<\/p>\n Her cash-rich campaign spared no expense as it hunted for voters \u2014 paying for an avalanche of advertising, social-media influencers, a for-hire door-knocking operation, thousands of staff, pricey rallies, a splashy Oprah town hall, celebrity concerts and even drone shows.<\/p>\n It was a spree that averaged roughly $100 million per week.<\/p>\n The frenzied spending has led to second-guessing among some Democrats, including whether investing in celebrity-fueled events with stars such as Lady Gaga and Beyonc\u00e9 was more ostentatious than effective.<\/p>\n Since her loss, the Harris operation has pressed supporters for more cash with desperate-sounding solicitations, stirring fears about post-election debts. \u201cIs there anything we can say?\u201d came one email asking for cash last Monday.<\/p>\n The biggest expense during the race was advertising. Between July 21 and Oct. 16, financial records show that the Harris campaign spent $494 million on producing and buying media, a category that includes both television and digital ads. The total sum through the election is said to be closer to $600 million.<\/p>\n Yet starting in October, her campaign was actually narrowly outspent on broadcast television by Mr. Trump, according to data from the ad-tracking service AdImpact.<\/p>\n The ads were just one piece of a campaign that had enough cash to spend on seemingly everything. There was $2.5 million directed toward three digital agencies that work with online influencers, records show. The campaign spent around $900,000 to book advertising on the exterior of the Sphere venue in Las Vegas in the last week of the race, two officials said. There were drone shows in the sky before the debate in Philadelphia in September and at a Pittsburgh Steelers game in October.<\/p>\n In a note on Friday to Ms. Harris\u2019s top fund-raisers, Chris Korge, the Democratic National Committee\u2019s finance chair, said that losing all seven battleground states had \u201cshocked us all.\u201d \u201cI did not take any personal fee,\u201d Ms. Winfrey wrote. \u201cHowever the people who worked on that production needed to be paid. And were. End of story.\u201d<\/p>\n The $1 million actually undercounts the full cost of the event, which ran closer to $2.5 million, according to two people briefed on the matter.<\/p>\n Another pricey choice was holding swing-state rallies featuring star performers on the eve of the election, including Lady Gaga in Philadelphia, Jon Bon Jovi in Detroit, Christina Aguilera in Nevada, James Taylor in North Carolina and Katy Perry in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n The singers themselves were not compensated, officials said, but the support staff was. The overall bill for the election-eve rallies exceeded the planned budget and is said to have topped $10 million.<\/p>\n The cost overruns were partly because the Harris team built an entire rally venue at a park in Pittsburgh only to be told by the Secret Service that the site could not be properly secured. They had to rush to take it down and rebuild at a second venue.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n If anyone wants to argue about what exactly cost Kamala Harris the 2024 election, I recommend this exhaustive post-mortem by Musa al-Gharbi.<\/a><\/p>\n After using quantitative data to demolish most of the conventional wisdom around Harris\u2019 2024 loss, al-Gharbi boils the loss down to two primary factors:<\/p>\n He also gets into specific missteps by Harris and her campaign:<\/p>\n \u2026it was really unfortunate that Harris was the Democrats\u2019 standard bearer for 2024.<\/p>\n Again, she added nothing to the ticket in 2020 in terms of shoring up support from groups where Democrats were seeing losses. Her approval numbers were underwater<\/a> almost the entire time she was in office as VP and she created a lot of avoidable drama throughout her tenure as well<\/a>. Some urged Biden to drop Kamala<\/a> and choose an alternative running mate in 2024. It likely would have benefitted the party if he had. <\/p>\n However, to be clear, it would definitely not have helped anything for Biden to have stayed in the race. Although Harris lost decisively, Democrats were headed for a clear landslide defeat<\/a> with Biden at the top of the ticket \u2013 even according to the Biden team\u2019s own internal data<\/a>. The polling, fundraising, and enthusiasm for the party all shot up durably and dramatically<\/a> after Biden\u2019s exit \u2013 even if the shifts were insufficient to ultimately pull off a win. If anything, Biden should have exited much sooner, allowing Democrats to hold an open primary, and possibly settle around a better alternative candidate.<\/p>\n In any event, Harris was clearly not prepared to succeed Joe Biden when it was her time to shine. Despite the President\u2019s long period of cognitive decline (which she played a key role in covering up<\/a>), she seemed to have done zero prep work for possibly stepping into the presidency or becoming the nominee. She apparently had no plans or vision<\/a> to articulate to voters after moving to the top of the ticket. Worse, Kamala largely avoided media<\/a> for much of her short campaign, rendering it impossible to convey any ideas she did have to voters.<\/p>\n Despite her \u201cturn the page,\u201d rhetoric, Harris was unwilling or unable to distance herself from the unpopular incumbent regime at a time when incumbent parties worldwide<\/a> were seeing major losses. As in 2016<\/a>, this was a moment when major change was needed, and Democrats once again ran on preserving the status quo.<\/p>\n This is all just the tip of the iceberg of Kamala\u2019s political malpractice. Ticking through a few major missteps in the final stretch:<\/p>\n One could go on and on about how Harris took an already-tough situation and made decisions that exacerbated her problems at nearly every turn. But then again, what\u2019d be the point of that? Many Harris sympathizers seem set on believing Kamala\u2019s campaign was \u201cflawless<\/a>,\u201d and the problem lies with the voters. Because of these same tendencies very little was learned<\/a> from the previous Trump cycles. I fear the same may hold true this time as well. Distressingly high numbers of influential people seem more interested in telling self-flattering stories than actually winning elections \u2014 and it\u2019s hard to persuade folks with that priority set of anything.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
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The book will be focused on the campaign, not her time as vice president. Harris has written previously about her upbringing and her early political career as a U.S. senator and attorney general of California in her 2019 memoir, \u201cThe Truths We Hold: An American Journey.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
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One particular Harris payment has drawn attention in the aftermath of the election: the $1 million paid to Oprah Winfrey\u2019s production firm, Harpo Productions. In an Instagram post, Ms. Winfrey said the company was paid to stage a live-streamed town hall in Detroit, providing the set, lights, cameras, microphones, crew, producers and even the chairs.<\/p>\n\n
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