Former aides to Joe Biden reacted with rage Wednesday to an excerpt from Kamala Harris' upcoming book in which she said the ex-president was "reckless" to run again and accused Biden's team of sabotaging her during her vice presidency.
Why it matters: The Biden and Harris camps publicly have claimed they were united through the four years of Biden's presidency, but now Harris is trying to distance herself from him — after not doing so during her short run for president.
- The release of the excerpt from her book, "107 Days" — due out Sept. 23 — has exposed years of hurt feelings and frustrations.
- "Vice President Harris was simply not good at the job," said one former Biden White House official. "She had basically zero substantive role in any of the administration's key work streams, and instead would just dive bomb in for stilted photo ops that exposed how out of depth she was."
- Biden is "not the reason she struggled in office or tanked her 2019 [presidential] campaign," the ex-official said. "Or lost the 2024 campaign, for that matter. The independent variable there is the vice president, not Biden or his aides."
State of play: In Harris' book excerpt published Wednesday morning in The Atlantic, she criticized Biden and his team's decision to run for re-election at age 81.
- " 'It's Joe and Jill's decision.' We 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," Harris wrote.
- "The stakes were simply too high. This wasn't a choice that should have been left to an individual's ego, an individual's ambition."
- Harris notes that in retrospect, she "perhaps" should have spoken up at the time but didn't because it would seem like a power grab. "I was in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out," she wrote.
She also said Biden's team repeatedly undermined her during her vice presidency and didn't see her success as his success.
- "Their thinking was zero-sum: If she's shining, he's dimmed. None of them grasped that if I did well, he did well," Harris wrote. "His team didn't get it."
- Harris added: "When the stories [about her] were unfair or inaccurate, the president's inner circle seemed fine with it. Indeed, it seemed as if they decided I should be knocked down a little bit more."
What they're saying: Former Biden White House officials argued that Harris is trying to scapegoat Biden to try to mask her own failures and shortcomings, according to interviews with a dozen former aides.
- "I'm not sure the very robust defense of not having the courage to speak up in the moment about Biden running is quite as persuasive as she thinks it is. If this is her attempt at political absolution: Lots of luck in your senior year," said one former Biden aide, a nod to a longtime Biden saying.
- The same aide, referring to Harris' duties in trying to reduce unauthorized migration, argued: "On the border stuff in particular I'd also say, if she had spent a fraction of the time and energy doing the work that she did on complaining, about how she was perceived, she would have been perceived a whole lot better."
- As for Harris potentially running for president in 2028, another ex-Biden aide quipped: "We're not going back!," a line Harris used on the 2024 campaign trail.
Former Biden chief of staff Ron Klain was more conciliatory.
- "I thought she did a good job as [vice president] and I feel badly that she found the experience negative," Klain said.
- Other former Biden aides said he made a mistake picking Harris as vice president in the first place and fumed that Harris was now using Democratic Party resources to sell a book that could divide the party.
Between the lines: Harris was not only silent internally about Biden running again, but also publicly attacked people who raised concerns about the president — including special counsel Robert Hur, who investigated Biden's handling of classified documents.
- After Hur wrote a report that called Biden's memory "hazy," "fuzzy," "faulty," and "poor," Harris said the report "could not be more wrong on the facts and clearly politically motivated, gratuitous."
- Harris wrote in her book that she didn't believe Biden was incapacitated but allowed that "at 81, Joe got tired. That's when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles."
The other side: The anger at Harris is not universal among Biden aides. Some said they're glad she finally spoke out about how the Biden White House didn't always have her back.
- "We all know that the Biden folks treated her and her team like sh*t. We never thought she would actually say anything," said one former Biden aide. "The staffers across a range of ages and positions that I'm talking to are proud of her."
A former senior Biden White House official said Harris was right that Biden shouldn't have run for reelection, and that not enough aides appreciated Harris.
- The official, however, added: "There were others on the Biden team, though, who really tried to help her thrive as VP. But she and her team did not seize that support and make the most of it. It is all a tragedy."
