Book review Kamala Harris lacks insight into why she lost to Trump in this vexing slog of a read

Almost a year after the 2024 US election, there are still some houses with “Harris” signs in their windows dotted around my liberal Philadelphia neighbourhood. The result left many people in a state of shock and denial, unable to process exactly what had gone wrong.

- Arwa Mahdawi

No one was more shocked than Kamala Harris, whose inner circle had been confident on election night that they had eked out a win during the whirlwind campaign. Cupcakes with “Madam President” toppings were ready to go; champagne was on ice. “It says a lot about how traumatized we both were by what happened that night that [my husband] Doug and I never discussed it with each other until I sat down to write this book,”

Harris reveals in her new memoir, which functions as a political postmortem.

I don’t know if Harris found writing 107 Days cathartic, but reading it certainly wasn’t. Instead, the book, which unfolds in strictly chronological order, is a frustrating slog. It seems likely to alienate her critics further and provides no closure or hope for her supporters.

Harris has always been accused of sounding phoney - criticism she brushes off in the book as sexism. When Charlamagne Tha God, the host of the popular radio show The Breakfast Club, observed that she came off as “very scripted” on the campaign trail, she retorted that it was actually “discipline”. The memoir was Harris’s opportunity to go off-script. Instead, she sticks to her talking points.