Harris: Allowing Biden to run in 2024 was reckless
At the age of 81, “Joe got tired” Kamala Harris says, according to an excerpt of her new book about the 2024 presidential race.
Source: C-Span
Kamala Harris believes it was reckless to allow former US president Joe Biden to decide to seek re-election in 2024 but felt she was the last person who could advise the 81-year-old not to run, according to excerpts from her new book.
Biden abandoned his re-election campaign on July 21, 2024, after a poor debate performance against Republican candidate Donald Trump.
It had prompted aides and Democrat officials to question publicly whether he could endure a full campaign or serve a second term.
“Of all the people in the White House, I was in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out. I knew it would come off to him as incredibly self-serving if I advised him not to run,” former US vice-president Harris writes in 107 Days, according to an excerpt published in The Atlantic magazine.
” ‘It’s Joe and [his wife] Jill’s decision’. We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotised. Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness.
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“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. It should have been more than a personal decision.”
Harris, 60, became the Democratic candidate and had just 107 days to make her case to the US public.
She lost to Trump, now 79, in last November’s presidential election and has kept a low profile since then. In July, she said she would not run for governor of California.
Biden’s stunning withdrawal from the race was followed by questions about whether the White House had withheld critical information about his mental acuity.
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Biden’s closest aides dismissed those concerns, saying he was fully capable of making important decisions.
Representatives for Biden declined to comment on the book.
In her book, Harris denied there was a White House conspiracy to cover up Biden’s age-related failings, which she described as becoming more pronounced as his presidential campaign heated up.
“On his worst day, he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best,” she writes.
“But at 81, Joe got tired.”
Biden was the oldest person to serve as US president – although Trump, then 78, in January became the oldest person to be sworn in.
Now 82, Biden has been diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones.
In her book, Harris also described the attacks she endured as vice president from conservative critics and others and said she got little help from the White House in beating those back.
“They had a huge comms team; they had Karine Jean-Pierre briefing in the pressroom every day. But getting anything positive said about my work or any defence against untrue attacks was almost impossible,” Harris wrote.
-with AAP
