NEW BOOK: Kamala Harris ‘Declined’ to Call Congressional Dems to Lobby on Behalf of Biden After Disastrous Debate
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Former Vice President Kamala Harris turned down a request from Biden campaign leadership to call Democratic members of Congress and shore up support for the then-president after his disastrous June 2024 debate performance — fearing it could look like she was trying to take his job, according to a new book from ABC News’ Jonathan Karl.
An excerpt from the upcoming Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America, published Friday by The Dispatch, describes the chaos inside the Democratic Party as calls for former President Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 race against President Donald Trump grew louder.
Karl reports that veteran Democratic strategist Donna Brazile and former South Carolina state legislator Bakari Sellers “began calling state party leaders and essentially every influential Black leader in the party” in July, as questions swirled about whether Biden would remain in the race.
“Brazile’s message to voting delegates was direct,” Karl writes. “‘You need to stand with Biden as long as he’s in the race. But if he drops out, we all need to unite behind Kamala Harris.’”
“In other words,” Karl adds, “the effort to secure the nomination for Harris had already begun.”
But Harris herself, he writes, was not involved in that effort. “Although she was the obvious heir apparent, Harris had not so much as hinted — publicly or privately — that Biden should drop out of the race as calls for him to do so grew louder,” Karl writes. “She made that decision out of loyalty to the president, sure, but also out of self-interest.”
According to Karl, Harris and her advisers knew that if Biden ended his campaign, his endorsement would likely determine whether she would be “coronated” as the nominee or face a bruising floor fight at the Democratic National Convention. For that reason, she kept her “head down,” remaining loyal — but not outspoken — during what Karl calls “those fateful three weeks in July.”
“Harris did not join the chorus of Democratic voices questioning Biden’s faculties, but she was not proactively defending him, either,” Karl writes. “Campaign leadership asked her at one point to call members of Congress to shore up Biden’s support among nervous Democrats, but two Harris aides later told me that she declined.”
“Harris believed such calls could be misinterpreted as the early stages of an effort to secure the nomination for herself,” the excerpt continues. “If she called Democratic members, those members could later disclose that they had spoken to her and misrepresent the purpose of the call.”
Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America will be released on October 28.
