Former Vice President Kamala Harris isn’t pulling punches in her new memoir, “107 Days,” where she reportedly describes Gov. Tim Walz’s shaky debate showing against then-Sen. JD Vance during the 2024 campaign.
According to a Fox News article, Harris writes in her book that she needed Walz to be the “closer” in the Oct. 1 debate, since she would not be debating Donald Trump again. Instead, she recalls feeling exasperated that Walz fell for Vance’s “mild-mannered aw-shucks” demeanor.
“I told the television screen: ‘You’re not there to make friends with the guy who is attacking your running mate,’” Harris wrote. “When Tim fell for it and started nodding and smiling at J.D.’s fake bipartisanship, I moaned to Doug, ‘What is happening?’”
Why Walz?
But before the infamous debate performance — later lampooned on Saturday Night Live, as Harris recounts in the book — she revisits her decision to select Walz over Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, whom Harris said “would have been an ideal partner — if I were a straight white man,” but he was “too big of a risk.”
Harris recalls how her senior staff and even some family members favored Walz, though her husband did not.
“Doug and I went back and forth,” Harris wrote. “He had known Josh longer and leaned that way. It was always going to have to be my decision. I told my staff and family that I didn’t want any more input, and I went to do something practical: I made a tasty rub and seasoned a pork roast. By the time I went to bed, I’d decided on Walz.”
Debate pressure mounts
In the book, Harris reportedly said that Walz was worried about how he was going to fare against Vance, whom Harris described as a “shape-shifter.”
“[Walz] had fretted from the outset that he wasn’t a good debater,” she wrote. “I’d discounted his concerns. He was so quick and pithy in front of the crowds at our rallies, I thought he’d bring those qualities to the podium.”
Harris goes into detail about the misstep she says Walz took when moderators pressed him about claiming to be in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre.
“Tim had been on his way to teach in China that summer but hadn’t yet left the United States on the date of the massacre. Instead of simply stating that he’d gotten his dates mixed up, but that being in China during a period of human rights oppression had profoundly influenced him, he talked about biking in Nebraska,” Harris wrote.
The stumble even drew parody on Saturday Night Live, which imagined Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff spitting out wine as they watched the debate. Harris said she didn’t actually spit, but said the skit was “otherwise uncanny in its portrait of our evening.”
Picking up the pieces
Despite the awkward showing during the vice presidential debate, Harris said she reassured Walz.
“Tim felt bad that he hadn’t done better,” she wrote. “I reassured him that the election would not be won or lost on account of that debate, and in fact it had a negligible effect on our polling. In choosing Tim, I thought that as a second-term governor and twelve-year congressman he would know what he was getting into. In hindsight, how could anyone?”
Harris recalled how Walz was “outraged by the unfairness” of attacks on his record and how the grind of the campaign hit his family hard.
“For the candidate, the family that is your source of strength can become your weakness in a presidential campaign,” Harris wrote.
The 320-page memoir went on sale Sept. 23, with Harris now in the full swing of a national book tour.
Jenna Gloeb
Jenna Gloeb is an Edward R. Murrow Award-winning journalist, media producer, public speaker, and screenwriter. Most recently, she worked as a reporter and on-air host for CCX Media. Jenna is a Minnesota native and resides in the Twin Cities with her husband, son, daughter, and two dogs.
