Former Vice President Kamala Harris detailed her running mate Tim Walz’s debate performance in her new book and recounted a showdown with then-Sen. JD Vance, which ultimately left her disappointed.
Harris writes in her new book, ‘107 Days,’ that she needed the Minnesota governor to be the ‘closer’ at the Oct. 1, 2024, debate given that she was not going to have another opportunity to debate Trump. But during the debate, she turned to her husband in frustration.
‘When Tim fell for it and started nodding and smiling at J.D.’s fake bipartisanship, I moaned to Doug, ‘What is happening?” Harris wrote, explaining how she believed Walz was duped by Vance’s ‘mild-mannered aw-shucks’ attitude.
‘I told the television screen: ‘You’re not there to make friends with the guy who is attacking your running mate.’’
Harris, who lamented that there was ‘more riding on Tim’s debate than there should have been,’ said that being the ‘closer’ and debating on such a large scale was ‘not a comfortable role’ for Walz.
‘He had fretted from the outset that he wasn’t a good debater,’ Harris wrote. ‘I’d discounted his concerns. He was so quick and pithy in front of the crowds at our rallies, I thought he’d bring those qualities to the podium.’
Harris referred to Vance as a ‘shape-shifter’ and said he ‘complained petulantly,’ along with more critiques of Walz.
‘Tim fell into a pattern of defending his record as a governor,’ Harris wrote. ‘Then he fumbled his answer when the moderator, predictably, questioned why he had claimed to be in Hong Kong during the democracy protests in Tiananmen Square.’
‘Tim had been on his way to teach in China that summer but hadn’t yet left the United States on the date of the massacre. Instead of simply stating that he’d gotten his dates mixed up, but that being in China during a period of human rights oppression had profoundly influenced him, he talked about biking in Nebraska.’
Harris mentioned a ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit after the debate that depicted Harris and her husband Doug watching the debate and spitting out wine in shock. Harris wrote that while she did not actually spit out wine while watching, ‘it was otherwise uncanny in its portrait of our evening.’
‘Tim felt bad that he hadn’t done better,’ Harris wrote.
‘I reassured him that the election would not be won or lost on account of that debate, and in fact it had a negligible effect on our polling. In choosing Tim, I thought that as a second-term governor and twelve-year congressman he would know what he was getting into. In hindsight, how could anyone?’
Harris wrote that she encouraged Walz to be ‘resilient’ during the campaign and suggested that he struggled with the ‘unfair’ attacks on his record and that it took a toll on his family.
‘For the candidate, the family that is your source of strength can become your weakness in a presidential campaign,’ Harris wrote, adding that Tim was ‘outraged by the unfairness.’
‘When I was a newly elected DA, an elderly gentleman in Atlanta pulled me aside with a bit of advice: ‘Baby, you be sure and don’t make it look too easy,’’ Harris wrote. ‘He knew it was not. And the higher you rise in the political food chain, the harder it gets. This is not a genteel profession. You must be ready to brawl.’
Harris also detailed in her book the decision process she used to ultimately choose Walz over Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Harris made a point of noting that her senior staff ‘strongly favored Tim’ and that her godson, along with her sister and brother-in-law, also preferred Walz.
‘Doug and I went back and forth,’ Harris wrote. ‘He had known Josh longer and leaned that way. It was always going to have to be my decision. I told my staff and family that I didn’t want any more input, and I went to do something practical: I made a tasty rub and seasoned a pork roast. By the time I went to bed, I’d decided on Walz.’