Book Review: 107 Days

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Five minutes is all it takes to make a simple PB&J sandwich.

You can watch an episode of your favorite crime drama in an hour. In 24 hours’ time, your heart will beat 100,000 times to pump roughly two thousand gallons of blood through your body. You can take a vacation in a week, set or release a new habit in three, learn a new task in a month, but in the new book “107 Days” by Kamala Harris, it takes real time to make history.

When she learned that she would ultimately be the Democratic nominee for the 2024 election, Vice President Kamala Harris was relaxing at home with her great-nieces and a jigsaw puzzle. The phone rang; it was her “boss,” Joe Biden, calling to tell her that he was halting the re-election race he’d been running for months, and was throwing his support to her.

And thus begins this open, sometimes controversial, straightforward political memoir.

In that pragmatic way you’ve come to expect from Harris, she says that she immediately made a few demands. She believed that timing and verbiage were key on any announcement that the Biden camp made, and she says she absolutely insisted that it be done right.

What she was about to embark upon wouldn’t be easy. She understood that it would be “the shortest campaign in modern presidential history” in a country torn by political division almost immediately after the election that made her Vice President. Oh-so-carefully but adamantly, she insists that she was loyal to Biden throughout, though she knew acknowledges trouble spots if he was tired or overstressed.

And so, she and her staff instantly began planning. The choosing of her VP offers readers a fascinating look inside the road to today’s White House (or, at least part of it) – and in this, Harris explains why she didn’t make certain choices.

There’s a lot of frustration inside this book – at Biden and his staff for occasional lack of support and recognition, at oppositional politics, at foreign governments, media, and at herself. The grievances are sometimes seething, allowing readers to conclude that the unsurprising stress of campaigning, non-stop travel, and sleepless nights while continuing to do Vice Presidential duties impacted Harris, as it would anyone.  She says her “campaign was fresh, alive, vibrating with energy. It seemed like anything was possible,” though her descriptions of the rigor of campaigning can suggest otherwise.

“This is not a genteel profession,” she says. “You must be ready to brawl.”

Advertisement

In light of that avowal, you may be surprised to know that there’s not an overly-excessive amount of opposition-bashing here. Yes, there’s some – but Harris mostly takes Michelle Obama’s “go high” stance.

Says Harris, “I do know that I tried.”

Overall, throughout “107 Days,” Harris shows little reticence in her stories: she is blunt, she pulls no punches, and she may leave a lot of peeved people behind. Still, if you voted Blue nearly a year ago, or if you’re concerned about politics today, it’s time for this book.