Kamala Harris reflects on 2024 campaign, Biden’s exit, and lessons learned

Former Vice President Kamala Harris is revisiting the tumultuous final stretch of the 2024 presidential election, offering new details about her short-lived campaign.

(NBC)- Former Vice President Kamala Harris is revisiting the tumultuous final stretch of the 2024 presidential election, offering new details about her short-lived campaign and the decision-making inside the Biden White House.

Speaking on The View, Harris said her 107-day campaign simply didn’t allow enough time to connect with voters. She also revealed that President Joe Biden confided in her about possibly ending his reelection bid nearly a week before officially stepping aside on July 15 — just two days after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Pennsylvania. Biden’s faltering June debate performance, widely criticized as disastrous, intensified pressure for him to withdraw.

Harris now calls the White House approach reckless. “Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness,” she writes, acknowledging her own share of responsibility. “When I talk about the recklessness, as much as anything, I’m talking about myself.”

Even as she defended Biden during the campaign’s final days, Harris weighed her options for a running mate. She ultimately chose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz but revealed her first choice was Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, noting the challenge of asking Americans to embrace a groundbreaking ticket. “He would have been an ideal partner if I were a straight white man. But we were already asking a lot of America,” she writes.

Buttigieg responded by emphasizing voters’ priorities: “The way that you earn trust with voters is based mostly on what they think you’re going to do for their lives, not on categories.”

Harris has not ruled out another presidential run in 2028 but says her focus, for now, remains elsewhere.