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The Democratic Party needs a lot of things right now: new leadership, a lot more backbone, a compelling message and a detailed, determined, aggressive, united campaign to take back the House and Senate in 2026.

The one thing the Democratic Party doesn’t need is a pity party. But that’s all we’re getting from former Vice President Kamala Harris, whose book on the 2024 campaign, “107 Days,” was published this week. In her book, from excerpts we’ve seen so far, Harris blames everybody for her 2024 loss to Donald Trump – except herself. She lost. We’re the ones suffering. She wants us to feel sorry for her.

Harris’ main beef, which she repeats often in the book and which the book’s very title shouts out loud, is that she didn’t have enough time. One hundred seven days wasn’t enough time, she argues, for her to make the case against a man who’d been president for four years and who’d been running for re-election ever since.

No doubt, Harris and her most loyal supporters believe that, but reality suggests otherwise. By being handed the nomination after Biden’s withdrawal from the race, Harris avoided a long and messy primary, won the endorsement of every major Democrat, emerged from a hugely positive convention with a united and enthusiastic Democratic party and led the national polls until the very end of the campaign.

Four years earlier, in her first presidential campaign, Harris withdrew from the race before one vote was cast in the Democratic primary – after campaigning for almost a year. Which does raise the question: How much time did she think she needed? Would one more week, or one more month, really have made any difference?

There were other factors. Like voter turn-out. In 2020, 81.2 million Americans voted for Joe Biden. In 2024, 75 million voted for Kamala Harris. Which means some 6 million voters who might have been expected to once again support Biden or the Democratic nominee against Trump simply did not turn out to vote. Why? Maybe because, which Harris never addresses in the book, she didn’t make a strong enough case to get them off the couch.

Harris also dances around two other mistakes. First, her failure to speak up and suggest to Biden that he should consider not running for re-election, as he had once promised. It was total “recklessness,” she writes, to leave that decision entirely up to the president and first lady. Yet she admits that, even though she knew he was experiencing physical and mental decline, she never raised the question because she felt it would appear “self-serving” to do so. The good of the country demanded otherwise.

Second, Harris never acknowledges another big shortcoming of the campaign: her failure, or unwillingness, to tell voters how she would differ from Joe Biden. She admits she wrestled with that question, but decided against it. Big mistake. You can’t blame that on only having 107 days.

The biggest question about Harris’ book is why she felt compelled to write it in the first place. It’s not good for the Democratic Party. Democrats today should be talking about every lie Trump tells, every law he breaks, every American who’s losing health care, every job lost under him – and why and how it’s important to curtail his abuse of power with a Democratic-controlled Congress in 2026. Any more time spent agonizing over 2024 is a giant distraction.

If her goal was to unite the party, she doesn’t do that. In fact, she goes out of her way to take cheap shots at possible presidential contenders. She decided against Josh Shapiro as her running mate, she notes, because he was too interested in himself. She says Pete Buttigieg was her first choice, but she rejected him because he was gay. Poor Tim Walz. Imagine, two years later, learning you were her second or third choice, only selected because you were an older, straight, white guy from the Midwest.

If her goal was to tease another run for president, she failed at that, too. And I say that as one who’s always admired Kamala Harris. She did a great job as San Francisco district attorney, California attorney general, and U.S. senator. She was an historic and effective vice president. And she has years of public service ahead of her.

But, after this book, that future will not include a second shot as the Democratic nominee for president. Americans don’t agree on everything. But one thing we do agree on: nobody likes a sore loser.

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(Bill Press is host of The BillPressPod, and author of 10 books, including: “From the Left: My Life in the Crossfire.” His email address is: bill@billpress.com. Readers may also follow him on Twitter @billpresspod and on BlueSky @BillPress.bsky.social.)

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