A book written by progressives, about progressives, blasted Kamala Harris at a time when political observers speculated whether she would be replaced as Joe Biden’s vice president. In it, White House aides outlined Harris’s inability to define a political agenda and her total reliance on personality.
Now, with Harris in a tight race for the presidency with Donald Trump, the book has been resurfaced eight months after its release.
As recently as the summer of 2023, a cavalcade of Democratic party superstars like California Gov. Gavin Newsom were brandishing their leadership credentials as calls grew for Biden to step aside. Once that time passed, the left-wing whisper machine turned on Harris and her historically abysmal favorability numbers.
Enter “The Truce: Progressives, Centrists, and the Future of the Democratic Party,” which dropped in January. That was just enough time for the left to replace Kamala Harris and, one would think, supplied them with enough ammunition to do it.
“It was rotten from the start,” a top aide from her 2020 campaign noted. “A lot of us, at least folks that I was friends with on the campaign, all realized that: ‘Yeah, this person should not be president of the United States,’ the aide told the authors.
The book, authored bywas written and published long before Harris was coronated as the heir apparent of the Democratic party’s presidential ticket.
The scathing quotes from insiders of her failed 2020 campaign painted a picture of Harris as a vapid and ineffectual leader who offers no clear picture of who she is politically or how she would govern as the president.
Some staffers spoke of discord as a result of tensions between Harris’ family and the top consulting firm she hired to advise her.
Staffers described a high level of dysfunction centered on the relationship between Harris’s sister Maya, who served as the campaign’s chair, and Bearstars Strategies’ Juan Rodriguez, who was serving as her campaign manager.
The divide between Rodriguez and Maya Harris became so toxic they moved to opposite wings of campaign headquarters and would hold separate meetings with staff.
“It was the most awkward day of my life,” a senior staffer told the authors. “People were literally having a thirty-minute audit meeting with Juan about how the campaign was going and then they were walking across the hall into the same meeting with Maya … I remember Juan popping into my office to find out how the meeting with Maya went.”
Campaign dysfunction extended beyond the family affair, too. Poor management of funds was a common theme, staffers told the authors.
“She cared less about how much money I was raising for her and more about what I was doing to create a good inclusive workspace,” a consultant told the authors. When Harris dropped out of the primary in December 2019, she cited lack of funds as the primary motivation for her decision.
The money management, however, was just one aspect of an overall “toxic climate,” the authors wrote.
In November 2019, the campaign’s state operations manager Kelly Mehlenbacher resigned in a scathing letter that was leaked to The New York Times.
“This is my third presidential campaign and I have never seen an organization treat its staff so poorly,” she wrote.
Kelly Mehlenbacher: “This is my third presidential campaign and I have never seen an organization treat its staff so poorly… With less than 90 days until Iowa we still do not have a real plan to win (NYT)”
— Eddie Zipperer (@EddieZipperer) August 25, 2024
” … because we have refused to confront our mistakes, foster an environment of critical thinking and honest feedback, or trust the expertise of talented staff, we find ourselves making the same unforced errors over and over,” Mehlenbacher wrote.
Rather than an isolated incident unique to her presidential campaign, the book’s authors say reports of toxicity came from staffers who worked with her in San Francisco, in the Senate, her presidential campaign and as Vice President.
The complaints “came from sources who signed up to work for her and, at least at one point, wanted her to succeed. It’s impossible to dismiss all of their critiques as entirely the result of prejudice,” they wrote.
One unnamed staffer described working for her as being like “Game of Thrones.”
As VP, she saw a shocking 91.5 percent turnover rate among her staff, according to an Open The Books review. Some notable departures included her “chief of staff, communications director, domestic-policy adviser and national security adviser,” according to The Atlantic.
Her fundraising woes briefly let up during her campaign, as she was the beneficiary of a fundraising boon on the back of her June 2019 debate performance when she attacked front-runner Joe Biden with a racial argument.
Harris, the only black candidate in a crowd of 10, went after Biden for his praise of segregationists. She spoke of her experience being bussed to school during California’s desegregation efforts in the 1970s.
Time for another Kamala Harris debate highlight. Throwback to when she attacked the man she is now running with for working with segregationists to oppose school busing:
“That little girl was me” #VPDebate
pic.twitter.com/d5DDiBi7m5— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) October 7, 2020
The line of attack was, according to the authors, a “showstopper,” and resulted in a filling of her campaign coffers. “Everything we did for like a week turned to gold,” a campaign staffer said. The honeymoon, however, quickly subsided.
The Biden campaign meanwhile, challenged Harris to actually make clear her position on bussing.
“If you attack somebody for a policy position, it’s fair for you to ask, ‘What’s your policy position?,” Biden’s campaign manager Greg Schultz noted.
On debate night Harris advocated for a federal mandate, but a week later she waffled on that position. While campaigning in Iowa she told reporters that “while she would have supported federally mandated busing in circumstances like those that existed in the ’70s, she wouldn’t support it in contemporary America,” the book’s authors wrote.
This, the authors noted, was nearly identical to Biden’s position on the issue.
Her bussing ambiguity was just one of her notable flip-flops highlighted by the authors.
Over a year before she launched her presidential campaign, Harris signed on to Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’s “Medicare for All” bill. The bill would enroll every American into a single-payer healthcare system, a position well to the left of any mainstream Democrat.
But, while initially defending the plan, she began to walk back her position and maintained her plan would still carve out an outsized role for private insurers.
Her refusal to go full bore on a single-payer plan “hurt us,” a staffer on her digital team told the authors.
“That hurt our fundraising numbers. That hurt us with Democratic activists, and that’s a problem. The last thing you ever want to be seen as is wishy-washy or flip-floppy,” the staffer said.
The issue underpinned an overall inability to define herself in any meaningful way or pick a direction for her campaign.
“Harris seemed to be trying to straddle the left flank and middle ground, but she ended up nowhere,” the book’s authors wrote. (RELATED: Democrats Release Platform For Biden’s Second Term As Harris Desperately Tries To Escape Boss’ Shadow)
Despite Harris’ failed campaign — she dropped out of the primary in December 2019 without earning a single delegate — she still found her way on to the presidential ticket. But her selection did little to alleviate her staff’s concerns.
“While Harris’s campaign was unquestionably successful in the sense that it elevated her to the second-highest office in the land, those closest to it were left with deep-seated doubts about her ability to lead.”
Democrats writ large struggled to envision Harris being able to win the White House.
“The fear was Kamala Harris could not win a race against Donald Trump, or perhaps against any Republican at all,” the authors wrote.
In fact, she was so deeply unpopular that left-friendly pundits suggested Biden replace her on the ticket.
“Biden could encourage a more open vice-presidential selection process that could produce a stronger running mate,” Washington Post columnist David Ignatius wrote in September 2023.
At the time, her favorability ratings hovered between 39 and 40 percent, according to polling site fivethirtyeight.com.
Others, like New York Magazine’s Eric Levitz, suggested Biden swap her out for the likes of Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Democratic Senators Raphael Warnock of Georgia or Tammy Duckworth of Illinois.
Her lack of policy positions meant she was leaning heavily on her charisma, something those close to her questioned.
“Harris struggled to decide what she was offering voters beyond her compelling persona,” the book’s authors wrote.
“That’s a lot of the reason people supported her,” a senior staffer said. “But you’ve got to back that up with ‘What are you going to do?'”
The clairvoyant quote from the staffer has proven to be quite prescient as, just over five weeks after Biden dropped out and endorsed Kamala, she’s hardly outlined any policy positions at all. (RELATED: Kamala Harris Caps Off DNC Without Releasing Policy Platform)
The only policy positions she’s personally vocalized are plans to implement price controls as a way to curb grocery store price gouging and tax proposals that include expanding the Earned Income and Child Tax Credits.
Beyond this, nearly all of the information regarding her presidential plans have come from anonymous staffers’ slow-drip leaks to news outlets.
Her lack of concrete proposals and continued reliance on charisma and vibes continue a pattern her aides said made her unfit for the presidency.
“Kamala is not ready for prime time,” a senior White House staffer told the authors. “She ain’t made for this.”
