Why Kamala Harris’ Bitter Book Tour Marks the Death of the Center-Left
A our for her new memoir, 107 Days, in which she reflects on her presidential campaign. Source: Associated Press.
Nearly a year into the second Trump administration, the United States is unraveling away from democracy and into brazen authoritarianism. Basic constitutional principles are under attack daily. Federal departments that should anchor stability, such as the Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI, and the Department of Defense, stagger under incompetence, bizarre scandals, or sheer irrelevance. The National Guard has been illegally deployed to several major American cities on mere whims, with more deployments on the horizon to amplify a political climate characterized by paranoia, rage, and violence.
Against this backdrop, the Democratic Party—ostensibly the last line of resistance to Trump’s chaos—has collapsed into a shell of symbolic gestures and self-preservation, offering no real opposition and no progressive vision for the country. Instead of mobilizing against authoritarianism, Democratic leadership cowers. Democratic leadership within Congress faces an approval rating at an all-time low, with leaders Schumer and Jeffries fawning over hopeful, fantastical views of a bipartisan solution to this administration's fascistic policies—most recently caving on healthcare demands after the longest government shutdown in history, a concession that underscores their refusal to fight for material reforms. The two “hope” for cooperation from Trump’s most ardent Congressional supporters in a battle on a different terrain.
Focusing on bipartisanship to suppress Trump’s authoritarianism reflects a dangerous misunderstanding: when one side wages war on democratic institutions, a “compromise” is surrender. Schumer and Jeffries speak the language of consensus to an opposition who have blatantly abandoned it, and in doing so, leave Democrats directionless, weak, and left bringing “strongly-worded letters” to a gun fight. Real opposition is nonexistent, so much so, that Trump can mock, not fight, Democrats into irrelevance. The tragedy is not simply that Trump laughs at them as he carries out his agenda unopposed, but that he is right to.
And into that vacuum—where meaningful opposition should exist but doesn’t—steps Kamala Harris, not with leadership or strategy on how to defeat Trumpism and the increasingly right-wing establishment, but to hawk her new memoir, 107 Days. The memoir epitomizes exactly what has gone wrong for Democrats; it is a complete failure without address, the product of a party that can no longer articulate a single material solution for the people it claims to represent. It is not an act of bravery or overdue truth-telling, but the product of staggering political immaturity and malpractice. In her recollection of her presidential campaign, Harris attacks the depleted Democratic party, including former allies like Joe Biden, Gavin Newsom, and Tim Walz as she seeks to distance herself from her loss and avoid any real shifts on her policy stances.
Harris recounts Biden’s “reckless” decision to run again in 2024, her frustration with his inner circle for sidelining her, and her disappointment with key party figures following his withdrawal. Harris also reveals she passed on Pete Buttigieg as her running mate due to the nation’s “unreadiness” in having a black woman and gay man at the top of the ticket, painting a rather candid picture of Democratic disunity during her short-lived 2024 campaign.
To be clear: 107 Days is not an act of bravery, nor a long-overdue truth-telling mission. It is the product of staggering political immaturity and malpractice. In this moment where the United States faces authoritarian drift, institutional collapse, and Trumpism in its rawest form, Harris only speaks out to reveal her tell-all. In doing so, she has reaffirmed exactly the disconnect American voters saw in her; she is inauthentic, blind to major economic and political crises, and embodies everything broken about the Democratic Party’s center-left establishment.
Harris’s attacks on Biden are steeped in egotistical revisionism. After months of portraying Biden as ready to take on Trump once more, and doubling-down on each and every policy, the rebranding of his re-election bid as “reckless” is dishonest cowardice. Her critiques ring hollow, and read less like truth-telling and more as a desperate attempt to shift blame for her own failures –the failures of a campaign that imploded before it took flight.
Additionally, Harris’ strong disdain of Biden's inner circle “sidelining” her betrays a rudimentary understanding of political power. Harris’ term as Vice President gave her the opportunities to pursue and champion causes the Biden-Harris campaign ran on, but instead squandered those opportunities in empty word salads, awkward public appearances, and disappearing acts during crises. In hitting record-low favorability as Vice President, she gave no reason for Biden’s advisers to promote her as the vision for change Democrats so desperately needed.
Even Harris’ criticism of other Democrats such as Newson, Whitmer, Buttigieg, Shapiro, Kelly rings hollow in its irony. Those Democrats are not scapegoats or saviors, but they are cut from the same cloth as Harris: corporate-friendly, consultant-driven politicians who confuse branding with leadership. To attack them in print is ironic, as her own failures are indistinguishable from theirs in opposition to Trump (perhaps with the exception of Newson). It is nonsensical critique, as Harris claws for relevance while proving she belongs to the very class of politicians she pretends to expose.
So what is Harris aiming for? The answer is simple: relevance. She knows her campaign will be remembered as one of the most humiliating and consequential in American history. Like failed politicians before her, Harris’ facade as an aggrieved truth-teller is as baseless as her campaign was.
But the damage, unfortunately, is done. Harris personifies the Democrats’ most destructive instincts: self-obsession, short-term vision, and a crippling detachment from the struggles of the working class.
The blueprint for real opposition exists in left-wing progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zohran Mamdani, and Bernie Sanders. These figures, along with the emergence of progressive candidates nationwide such as Graham Platner, Kat Abughazaleh, and Abdul El-Sayed, showcase leaders who fight with authenticity, principle, and solidarity rather than self-promotion. For instance, Sanders is actively serving as the godfather of this new era of left-wing populism; with his Fighting Oligarchy Tour amassing crowds of thousands in blood-red states, he is platforming progressive politicians and policies to provide the vision Democrats have sorely lacked and reconnect them with the working class. Meanwhile, Harris only affords to be in public when she can display her dated, arrogant persona with a self-indulgent memoir. This is the opposite of leadership.
The fight against Trumpism will not be won through centrist vanity projects. It needs a movement that rejects corporate performativity and speaks to working people. Anything less is just another chapter in Democratic defeat.