Kamala Harris & "107 Days" - Is She a Cry Baby Or Could She Have Won If We Got to Know Her ...

The polished and heavily packaged Kamala Harris of the 2024 presidential campaign was sealed tight. There were no porous openings. Even what was declared a success - the debate coached by then Paul, Weiss partner Karen Dunn - left us clueless who this human being was.

Now that we have access to the excerpt of her memoir "107 Days" released to The Atlantic we're getting a sense of a real Kamala Harris. Based on early orders for the September 23rd publication date it is likely to sell well. Currently it ranks 447 on Amazon. So, the human being will have plenty of exposure.

Essentially what we get from the excerpt are these messages:

Harris took a lot of s**t as vice president. Quote: "No one around the president advocated, Give her something she can win with."

The reputational damage of that s**t stunk up the campaign since the White House press function wasn't aggressive in fixes.

And, now, given the tone and content of "107 Days," she's finished putting up with s**t. Or even continuing to take one for the team, that is the Democrats. Explicitly she says and what media outlets are picking up is this disclosure of how Joe Biden came to run for re-election:

“'It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.' We [the Dems] all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized. Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness. The stakes were simply too high."

Okay, that's Kamala Harris in 2025. At The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg essentially likes the presentation of a self. He finds this Harris full of surprises. He expected her to be politico/lawyerly hyper-careful. Some of that is there but:

" ... so is another Harris: blunt, knowing, fervent, occasionally profane, slyly funny."

The peril here, of course, is that this Harris could go down in history as a cry baby. Politics is a tough game and it looks like she had been neither a skilled player as vice president nor in the short campaign for president.

On the other hand, the assessment of Harris could be reset and her runway extended for big things in the near future. We could do what was once considered looking even more foolish after betting on the wrong horse: Ask what if she had had more time to put together herself for a campaign. 

Yeah, glide out of the robotic persona. 

Invest all that money donated or raised by the likes of Reid Hoffman, Mark Cuban, Robbie Kaplan, Brad Karp and more in videos which captured the human. 

Even take on the old order of things, that is Jill and Joe. They were easy targets.

Peak performance in anything is something we move toward. That requires lots of mistakes along the way. For that very reason I recommend to those I coach not to remain in their first job. Start over as the professional you now have evolved into. 

So, how do I size up Kamala Harris now? Probably as a victim of very bad advice. I know that syndrome well. She seemed not to be able to think for herself. But that's not who she probably is currently. The most critical aspect of success? Confidence. 

Thrown off your game, maybe the first time since you started working? You made all the right moves and then the world moved in another direction.

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