New Book Reveals Inside Story of Harris's 2024 Campaign

Kamala Harris has a new book, and it’s a tell-all about 107 days of campaign carnage. I haven’t read one word of it, and I don’t need to. I already know the ending. She was never going to win. Not in 2020. Not in 2024. Not in this country.

Before someone says I'm a hater, let me remind you: the back window of my SUV still has a “We’re Not Going Back” sticker clinging to the glass like a badge of survival.

Kamala is my girl.

I love women in politics. I worship them, even when the system doesn’t. Hillary Clinton, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jasmine Crockett—I’d invite them all to lotería night with my girls. In fifth grade I wrote a school report on Margaret Thatcher, even though I couldn’t pronounce her name. In high school I wrote about Ann Richards. Now, I write about Kamala Harris. The devotion has always been there. The loyalty. The hope. The mirror.

I don't even want to read her book. I will probably end up hating this timeline more than I already do.

American women don’t get protected by gods. American women do not get protected by voters. They get ignored and passed on, no matter how educated or qualified. That’s not my bitterness talking. That’s the scoreboard.

Kamala didn’t stand a chance. She walked into the arena with experience, credentials, and the kind of composure most men couldn’t fake for five minutes. She also walked into a country that doesn’t forgive ambition in women. Not even the soft kind, wrapped in smiles and pearls. Hillary proved it. Elizabeth Warren proved it. Every woman who’s tried to claim the Oval Office has been told—politely, condescendingly, or with outright venom—to sit down.

And Kamala did sit down, in a sense. She played the role of Vice President, quiet when she was supposed to be, visible when it was safe. She carried Biden’s policies, absorbed the criticism, and never once got the luxury of being mediocre. Mediocrity is a man’s privilege. Women get to work twice as hard and have their failures printed in a hardcover edition.

This new book of hers is a roll call of stumbles. She’s spelling out the missteps so the critics don’t have to. I respect the honesty, even if it lands like self-sabotage. She admits the disasters, like her View appearance where she blanked on how she’d differ from Biden. She confesses she considered Pete Buttigieg as a running mate but pulled back, worrying America wouldn’t accept a Black woman and a gay man on the same ticket. She even calls Biden’s hesitation reckless, revealing the cracks inside her own party. There are stranger moments too—like Trump calling her after an assassination attempt.

Her defeats were never about poor strategy alone. They were about the unforgiving terrain of a country that lets women get close enough to power to taste it, then yanks the glass ceiling down like a trapdoor.

I don’t need a book to know why her campaign failed. The reasons live in every election cycle, every focus group, every newsroom panel where the words “likability” and “electability” come out of men’s mouths like scripture. America wasn’t ready for Kamala. It wasn’t ready for Hillary. It’s not ready for any woman who wants to sit behind the desk built for men who start wars, crash economies, and get re-elected anyway.

This is a woman’s world, but not a woman’s country. That’s the truth, and it’s written all over the record books. You don’t need to buy Harris’s memoir to understand that. You only need to look at history and then at the rearview mirror, where my sticker still hangs on for dear life.

I have to say, it was cool how she named names inside her own party. Some may call it blame-shifting, finger-pointing, or a 320-page excuse on “not enough time,” but she got her point across. She let everyone know exactly who dropped the ball and who dribbled the most for her, and honestly, that’s the chapter Democrats deserved.

Her book will get read. They will quote it. They will weaponize it. They will use it as a doorstop.

The Guardian slammed it for lacking closure, The Wall Street Journal called it a campaign of wishful thinking, and Stephen A. Smith dismissed it altogether with a shrugging “who cares.” Yet the only opinion that matters is hers. She wrote the book for a reason—and nursing her feelings wasn’t it.

We all wanted a happy ending for Kamala, and maybe the happy ending is that she gets to tell her story. Many may think she should’ve skipped the memoir and dropped a cookbook. But just like any ambitious woman, she didn’t want a kitchen; she wanted a White House.

@Santitos

@salinasmariasantos