In short
Episode Summary: What a Book of Excuses Reveals About the Democrats’ Future
Podcast Title
The Opinions
Episode Title
What a Book of Excuses Reveals About the Democrats’ Future
Hosts
Michelle Cottle, Lydia Polgreen, Carlos Lozada
Overview In this episode, the hosts dive into Kamala Harris's new memoir, "107 Days," which they argue serves primarily as a book of excuses regarding her failed presidential campaign. They analyze the implications of her narrative on the Democratic Party's future leadership, particularly as they approach the 2028 elections.
Key Themes and Discussions
First Impressions of "107 Days"
- Carlos Lozada: Describes the book as an "excuse," suggesting that Harris constantly attributes her campaign failures to a lack of time.
- Lydia Polgreen: Labels the memoir as "lawyerly," indicating it feels more like a legal brief rather than an effective communication to the electorate.
- Michelle Cottle: Sees the book as "whiny," reflecting a defensive posture rather than a proactive one.
Central Arguments
- Excuses vs. Accountability: The book repeatedly cites how insufficient time hindered Harris's ability to connect with voters and present a clear economic vision.
- Lawyerly Perspective: The memoir lacks a persuasive quality aimed at the general public, instead catering to a political elite audience.
- Failure to Critique Biden: Harris avoids directly addressing President Biden's role in her campaign's shortcomings, instead offering vague references to external challenges.
Implications for the Democratic Party
- Need for Fresh Leadership: The hosts argue that the Democratic Party needs to engage in a "big, messy battle" for ideas and leadership heading into 2028.
- Competition of Ideas: A robust primary process is necessary to allow diverse ideas to flourish, which could help the party define itself beyond merely opposing Trump.
- Potential Candidates: Discussion on emerging candidates for 2028 and the possibility of someone not currently in the spotlight becoming the nominee.
Reflection on Strategy and Messaging
- Harris's approach is viewed as overly cautious, lacking the boldness needed to resonate with voters on critical issues, such as the Middle East conflict.
- The hosts critique her lack of specificity in policy proposals, arguing that more ambitious ideas could have energized her campaign.
Conclusion and Recommendations
- The conversation concludes with reflections on what could have been done differently by Harris and the Democratic Party.
- Recommendations to engage with upcoming local political battles to better understand voter sentiment before the presidential election.
Key Takeaways
- "107 Days" as a Memoir: The book reflects Kamala Harris's cautious political nature and the challenges of articulating a compelling vision for the future.
- Democratic Party's Path Forward: The need for open debates and primaries to establish a clear and resonant narrative for the party.
- Future of Political Leadership: The potential for new and unexpected candidates to emerge as viable alternatives in upcoming elections.
Final Thoughts The episode underlines the complexities of political memoirs and the ongoing challenges faced by the Democratic Party as it navigates its future leadership landscape. The discussion emphasizes the importance of accountability, boldness in strategy, and genuine engagement with voters in shaping a successful political narrative moving forward.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Lydia Polgreen:When you use the trusted investing and savings app Betterment to help grow your money automatically,
0:05Carlos Lozada:you have more time for new niche hobbies like collecting miniatures. The joy that brings helps you sleep better at night and even motivates you to always use your PM moisturizer. Now you've got a dewy glow and a sense of balance to match.
0:20Lydia Polgreen:Not worrying where your money is growing. That's the Betterment Effect. Get started today at Betterment.com. Investing involves risk. Performance not guaranteed. This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it.
0:50Lydia Polgreen:I'm Michelle Cottle. I write about national politics for New York Times opinion. This week, Jamel and David are away. But never fear, this just means that I am joined by my fabulous colleagues and columnists, Lydia Polgreen and Carlos Lozada. Friends, hello, welcome. Hello, Michelle.
1:10Michelle Cottle:Back together, feels good.
1:12Lydia Polgreen:So what we're going to talk about, Kamala Harris has a new memoir out, 107 Days. Came out this week, Lydia and Carlos have given it a thoughtful read. Carlos basically gives everything a thoughtful read. And I've come through all the juicy bits. So we're going to break it down and talk through the implications for the Democratic Party, especially going forward. All right. So let's get right into it. What I want first, your first impressions. I need a one-word reaction on what you two thought of the book.
1:43Michelle Cottle:One word. One word. Give it to me, Carlos. Why must we be so reductionist? One word. I wrote 2 ,000 words and told me to pick one. Okay, I'll just come out and say, because this is what I wrote about. I will say the word is excuse, right? This is not just an explanation for why Harris thinks she lost. I think it's the excuse that she gives. And the excuse is right in the title, 107 days. Throughout the book, she keeps saying, if I had more time, I could have better sold my economic vision. I could have forged a stronger tie to voters. I could have made clear I was offered a superior alternative to Trump.
2:15Michelle Cottle:But basically, 107 days is her excuse for why she lost the election. Okay.
2:20Lydia Polgreen:Lydia, it's pretty harsh.
2:21Carlos Lozada:Yeah. I would say lawyerly, this is a, you know, a famously— That may be harsher, though. Famously, Kamala Harris is a lawyer. I don't know if you've heard. I hear she's a prosecutor. I've heard that. A prosecutor, yes. And when you hear—when you think of lawyers and works of, you know, literary works or movies or whatever, you think about courtroom scenes, you think about closing arguments. And this, to me, felt lawyerly in the sense that it felt like a legal brief almost. And I mean that in the sense that it was not a document for a jury of American citizens aimed at persuasion, but a kind of, I don't know, almost insider account of her argument for herself.
3:08Carlos Lozada:So I guess I'm saying something quite similar to what Carlos is saying. It's an excuse. Just gentler, I guess. But it has this quality of a kind of legal brief. And that, to me, feels like of a piece with the whole problem with her campaign, which is who ultimately was this for? And it often felt like she was performing for a political class of elites rather than actually trying to win over the American people. So, lawyerly, that's my word.
3:38Lydia Polgreen:Yeah, my word, and it's a little bit harsh, but I got on the thesaurus.com and looked up, like, is there an alternative that's less harsh? And there's just not. It's just a little whiny, which is along the lines of defense or defensive. So maybe defensive, I guess. But that's stepping on Carlos's line here. But it was just like, well, I only had 107 days and all these people didn't trust me in the Biden White House. And these people weren't respectful. And how am I supposed to operate with this going on? I mean, I get it. She did yeoman's labor in the time she was given and she was in a bad position.
4:21Lydia Polgreen:But my big question coming out of this is what you have alluded to, Lydia. Why? What is the point of this book? um carlos as far as her excuses for what happened she does point out the very real i guess challenges that she was up against either from the administration or from outside i mean do you think that these excuses are fair or accurate i mean does is does she have a justifiable case here to whine about?
4:56Michelle Cottle:Well, when I say excuse, like I should emphasize, I'm not like reading tea leaves, you know, like she very overtly says that this is why she feels that she lost. Like at the very end of the book, in the second to last page of the book, she says, 107 days were not in the end long enough to accomplish the task of winning the presidency. And so that made me try to go through a thought experiment. So I see what you guys think of this, right? What if she had more time? What if she and the Democrats, in fact, had a lot more time? What if right after the midterm election, Biden had said, look, I said I'd be a transitional figure.
5:35Michelle Cottle:I'm getting older. I'm slowing down. So I will be. I'm going to hand this off. We have a deep bench in the party. Let's have a process to pick the next nominee. In that kind of scenario, do you think Kamala Harris would have necessarily emerged as the victor? The counterfactuals are hard, but I don't think it would be preordained. There are ways in which the short timeframe actually helped her rather than hindered her. She says it herself. She said that when Biden drops out and people were asking her, you know, what should the process be like to pick a new nominee? She just shut it down entirely.
6:07Michelle Cottle:She said, you know, if they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them. How much more time would have taken to pull that off? Right? So it feels a bit rich to complain about their short timeframe, that that's not, you know, that kept you from winning. And at the same time, rely on the short timeframe to secure the nomination in the first place.
6:27Lydia Polgreen:See, I looked at that as two different issues, though, which is that one, if there had been a process, which, you know, folks like Nancy Pelosi were pushing for, Kamala might not have wound up the nominee. But whoever was given 107 days could have made a similar argument if they were so inclined. So she's trying to have her cake and eat it too, yes. But I mean, there are kind of separate arguments, right?
6:58Carlos Lozada:Maybe, but I think that probably the most devastating proof that time wasn't the issue is that she actually got a huge boost, polling, fundraising, all of that right at the beginning. And I went out on the campaign trail, but it wasn't actually the campaign trail yet because she hadn't dropped out, because Biden hadn't dropped out yet. And, you know, there was a lot of electricity. There was a lot of energy. There were, you know, this kind of huge groundswell and it all just kind of frittered away. It just didn't last. And she was unable to sustain it. I think that one of the problems, though, with talking about excuses is that she actually does have, I think, a really big and very valid excuse in the kind of broadest sense, which is that this is all Joe Biden's fault.
7:52Carlos Lozada:Like, he's the one who chose not to drop out after the midterms and create the space and enough time. But that case that she could have made that ultimately this was Biden's fault because of loyalty or whatever, you know, misplaced, you know, feelings she's having, she really doesn't directly go after Biden at all in this book, except in the most glancing ways and usually putting the words in somebody else's mouth. So, you know, I think— Talk about lawyerly there. She is really trying to— I mean, that's the thing. It's, you know, I didn't have enough time, but there was no time to do this. I was stuck in this position by this, you know, my predecessor, but I don't actually want to go out there and name the thing that put me in this position and put responsibility on that person.
8:40Carlos Lozada:So it's an incredibly frustrating thing to read. And you just sort of wonder, like, who is actually thinking about what was best for the country?
8:47Lydia Polgreen:So, Carlos, I was going to ask you this. She, on multiple occasions, has the killer lines in somebody else's mouth, like David Plouffe apparently telling her that everybody hates Joe Biden. Even her husband. But this kind of, to me, speaks to her general problem of being too cautious and scripted and lawyerly anyway. I mean, how did you read all of that?
9:13Michelle Cottle:So I said earlier I didn't want to be reductionist, but I'll be reductionist here. Oh, come on, be reductionist. I mean, this is an odd sort of political memoir, right? There are two, and here's the reductionist. There are two main kinds of Washington memoirs. memoirs. And which kind you write depends on what stage you're in in your career. So if you still have high hopes for bigger jobs, then the memoir you write tends to be careful. It's lawyerly, as you want to piss too many people off. You know, they're people keeping their powder dry for some future campaign, laying out your, you know, positive policy, vision, et cetera, et cetera.
9:53Michelle Cottle:The Truths We Hold, her prior book in 2019, was that kind of book. Then there's the kind of memoir that you write when you're done. You know, when you're done with your career and you can just unload and tell everyone what you really think. What's really wrong with the world or with the country or with the party or with, you know, your colleagues, like whoever it is. Harris's memoir is weird because it's kind of stuck between the two. She does just enough to kind of annoy some people and some potential future allies, but not enough to really feel like she's telling us everything or, you know, really revealing something significant.
10:32Michelle Cottle:It's neither fish nor fowl. In Peru, you would say, It's not chicha, it's not lemonade, right? Like, it's something else, right? So she takes the pot shots at Josh Shapiro or Gavin Newsom, but it's kind of small potatoes. Then when she can sort of talk about some big issues, she really pulls her punches. Like she's still kind of being careful or cautious. Gaza is the perfect example, right? She speaks very generically about like, look, I just, you know, I wanted to have a more nuanced conversation and people are demonizing people on all sides. And I don't want to do that. And then when she talks about sort of a specific controversy in that, that she says there was some tension and bitterness that we didn't give a speaking slot at the convention to a Palestinian speaker.
11:17Michelle Cottle:And that's it. She doesn't say like, why? You know, she doesn't sort of get into that at all. So it's a weird memoir because it doesn't really do either thing that these memoirs usually attempt to do. It's sort of trying to do them all and therefore does neither.
11:32Lydia Polgreen:LESLIE KENDRICK Lydia, how much do you think that policy issues played a role in her frittering away all this versus just, you know, the general climate or the issues with Biden or her? Like, if she'd done something on Gaza, would it have been different?
11:49Carlos Lozada:I mean, we'll never know. You know, I think that it is clear that there was a hunger for someone to speak truth to power in a really meaningful way about the lawlessness and the just complete pitilessness of the Israeli campaign in Gaza. And I think that to me, what's interesting, and this came up in the campaign of Zoran Mamdani, right, for mayor of New York to win the primary, that the appeal of taking a stand on Gaza was a message that meant like, I actually really believe in something. And even if it costs me politically, I'm going to stick with my principle on this issue. You know, that told people something that actually goes beyond policy.
12:34Carlos Lozada:It says like, I stand for a policy because I really believe in something. But, you know, reading this book, it was really a reminder of just how small ball so much of what Kamala Harris, you know, was proposing in her campaign was, you know. I had conveniently or inconveniently forgotten about the, you know,$25 ,000 first homeowner credit, you know, that she had put out there as her policy to help, you know, with the affordability crisis, which she didn't really call the affordability crisis. And there were just sort of examples after example after example of that kind of thing where you had very kind of big picture high-flown rhetoric about quote-unquote ideas, meaning saving democracy, bipartisanship, you know, we're better than this.
13:24Carlos Lozada:Freedom. freedom, you know, all of those kinds of things without any, like, a ton of specificity matched with, you know, frankly, some really kind of small bore policy proposals that, you know, I think at one point in the book, she talks about, like, really only wanting to propose things that were possible.
13:43Lydia Polgreen:Oh, that's madness in a presidential race.
13:46Carlos Lozada:Yeah, that just felt like you're basically limiting yourself to begin with. There's just a real kind of lack of...
13:52Michelle Cottle:You campaign in poetry and govern in prose, right?
13:55Carlos Lozada:Yeah, exactly. But even beyond that, you know, it's like you campaign in policy papers, but those policy papers are things that, you know, like literally, you know, a congressional intern couldn't get excited about. It's stuff that I don't understand how any of this is going to motivate American voters at this particular juncture and again, casting our minds back to that time.
14:20Lydia Polgreen:which brings us to the enduring question of she was supposed to be leading a party that doesn't really have a clear vision or didn't seem to have a clear vision except for we're not Trump and the question now is if you look at this book it seems to suffer from a similar problem which is it's almost entirely backward looking and doesn't really seem to have an idea of where she or the party would go moving forward.
14:55Michelle Cottle:I mean, she she says flat out that, you know, near the end. In fact, I think it's in the in the epilogue or the afterward or whatever she chose to call the thing at the end that we need to come up with our own blueprint that sets out our alternative vision for the country. You know, it's like, well, yeah, but like you didn't just have 107 days.
15:13Lydia Polgreen:You had four years as vice president of the United States.
15:17Michelle Cottle:And to say now that, I mean, it's like she has concepts of a plan, right? We need to come up with our blueprint, you know?
15:24Carlos Lozada:Only Trump can get away with concepts of a plan.
15:26Michelle Cottle:And that's not just an off-the-cuff thing in a debate. That's like how she wrote it in the book.
15:31Lydia Polgreen:It's a book.
Read the full transcript
15:32Michelle Cottle:Right? The thing is, I think you're right, Michelle, in that the party has defined itself so fully as being against Trump that it sometimes has a hard time articulating what it's for. You know, it's like it's almost like Trump and Trumpism is the is the guy. It's just whatever they do, I'm going to push against. It's like it's like Costanza. You know, I will do the opposite. Right. The I think part of the reason, for instance, that, you know, they didn't do more on the border is that they felt they had to be completely opposite of what Trump had done, the sort of performative cruelty against immigrants during his term.
16:05Michelle Cottle:But, you know, they won't be running against Trump in 2028, though they'll be running against some form of Trumpism. What this reminded me of in terms of books is in Michael Wolff's first book about Trump, Fire and Fury, right? Remember that book that got so much attention? There's this really kind of brutal moment early on in that first year of the presidency where some deputy chief of staff or something confronts Jared Kushner about Trump's objectives, right? And he said, and this person said, I think it was Katie Walsh. And she said, just give me the three things that the president wants to focus on.
16:41Michelle Cottle:What are the three priorities of this White House? And Kushner says, yes, we probably should have that conversation. Right. Like it had never occurred to him. Like there were no priorities. Right. And so when I saw Harris saying, like, we need to come up with our own blueprint for what we want to, you know, how you want to leave the country. It's like, yeah, of course you should. That's that's sort of your job. You know, that's that's what you should have been doing. It just it reminded me of that kind of cluelessness early on in the in the Trump years.
17:08Carlos Lozada:Yeah, I mean, I just I written down in my notebook that line that you you just quoted about the blueprint. It's on page 297 of a 300 page book. 300 page book. So, you know, make of that what you will. You know, we were talking earlier about time and, you know, the was it enough time? Did she suffer because there was, in fact, just a little bit too much time? And if you'd had less and more, I think that that conversation about time is actually downstream to a conversation about competition and democracy. And it's interesting. And this, you know, brings us into the conversation about the present and then, you know, meaning the midterms in 2026.
17:50Carlos Lozada:And then also the 2028 race for the presidency, which, you know, hopefully the Democrat will not be facing Donald Trump in that race, although you never know. You got to you got to hedge your bets there. But I think that the solution to this problem, you know, of ideas is actually to have a competition about ideas. And the way that you have a competition about ideas is that you have like big brawling, knockdown primaries. Right. You you you put your ideas in front of voters. You describe them. You build them out. You argue for them. You alter them. And so, you know, it strikes me that not having had a primary, and I think that, frankly, just in practical terms, Harris was right that, you know, there really wasn't enough time to do a mini primary.
18:39Carlos Lozada:And a mini primary would have required sort of like elites identifying certain, you know, candidates as being eligible, you know, beforehand. So it would have been a cursed, you know, process no matter what. But I came away from this book thinking, you know, we need like a big, big, messy battle within the Democratic Party in order to to figure out the answer of this question of the blueprint, because ultimately it needs to come from voters. Right. We need to have lots of different ideas out there that people get to debate and decide and tell their leaders like these are the things that that that really resonate with us.
19:14Lydia Polgreen:I mean, it is worth noting that 2016, when we wound up with Trump for the first time, was a Republican primary that was pretty rowdy. I mean, everybody thought, oh, maybe George. Pretty rowdy. Maybe the next Bush, you know, Jeb Bush was seen as a big contender. Ted Cruz wouldn't give up the ship for, you know, an extended period. It was it was brutal. And, you know, at the end of it, the voters had their say and the Democrats, you know.
19:45Carlos Lozada:Well, but that's the thing. I mean, maybe the way to save democracy is by like doing democracy. You know, maybe it's like actually having open competition where people bring their personalities, bring their ideas and, you know, fight for the support of voters. That's true within parties and it's true between parties.
20:02Michelle Cottle:Well, think about the last time the Democrats had that kind of debate in a presidential primary. It wasn't 2020. 2020, it's not that Joe Biden emerged out of the, you know, the froth of a battle of ideas, right? He was he was anointed quickly because they were terrified it might be Bernie and Bernie can't be Trump. And so let's put Joe in there. And, you know, it's been you have to go back to 2016. You have to go back, you know, a long time to think about when they last did that at the presidential level. And you get rusty. You need to be able to hash those things out and hash them out publicly.
20:41Michelle Cottle:And that's that's the power of of primaries.
20:44Carlos Lozada:Yeah, the last one that they, where that was really, truly the case, produced Barack Obama. I mean, a two-term, you know, incredibly successful Democratic president who remains one of the most popular figures in American public life. So that in and of itself is testament to what can be achieved.
21:03Lydia Polgreen:And I think too often, especially on the Democratic side, people wait and pay attention at the presidential moment. But this year you have two governor's races, which are always a little bit different. And then you have the beginnings of a lot of these Senate fights. And it's good to see what is rising to the top, what is resonating with voters, what is not, before you get into the heat of a presidential race, especially with a party that doesn't have any obvious leaders. And of course, all of that sort of clarifies after the midterms. But it is good to watch some of these battles being played out and for voters to pay attention before it comes time to pick a president, which is always like one of my hobby horses.
21:53Lydia Polgreen:Please pay attention to something other than the presidential level so that you know what's at stake.
21:59Carlos Lozada:Yeah, I mean, I think the most exciting possibility to me is that the Democratic nominee in 2028 is someone who we are not even talking about right now. And long after, you know, all of the review copies of 107 Days have been sold at the Strand bookstore. The remainder stand. And, you know, it's marked down at Barnes & Noble, right? That, like, the name of the person who ultimately is going to win the Democratic primary to be the party standard bearer in 2028, like, we don't know who that person is. And, in fact, is someone who's, like, not even in the conversation. And I think that there's tremendous risk in that.
22:40Carlos Lozada:But I think that there's also tremendous excitement and possibility. You see these candidates emerging in, you know, and some of them even running as independents rather than as Democrats, which is interesting in and of itself. And you just think, like, this is actually exciting to see people who are saying something different, something new, trying to connect with voters on a different level and really listen to what their constituencies are telling them. I really hope that some of that energy carries over into whatever happens and we don't have a kind of depressing choice between the same menu of options who people were considering if we had a mini primary after Joe Biden dropped out.
23:20Lydia Polgreen:Absolutely. I mean, I think back to 2008 when they thought the candidate that might be the dark horse to come in and beat Hillary Clinton was going to be Mark Warner out of Virginia. And instead, we wind up with, you know, this first term senator from Illinois who nobody had ever heard of or, you know. But that's the problem with parties trying to game things out too far in advance or when you like try to line up your ducks before you see what voters are telling you. And this was obviously a huge problem in the last presidential election. Voters were telling the Democratic Party, we have big concerns about Joe Biden and the party leaders just weren't listening.
24:03Lydia Polgreen:And I think ultimately that is kind of what doomed Kamala. She could have run the best race in the world. And I'm not sure it would have been enough to overcome voters since that they had been sold a bill of goods with her predecessor. But again, armchair quarterbacking, not that useful, I guess, at this point.
24:26Michelle Cottle:Wait, if we stop armchair quarterbacking, then what are we even doing here?
24:31Carlos Lozada:That's the job. I will say that one of the people who I think actually really benefits from this book is actually Pete Buttigieg. This maybe gets to some of the ways in which this book inadvertently does work that is perhaps important. I mean, Pete Buttigieg is a talented guy, and I think we'll see more of him. I'm not saying that he's my favorite or even on my list of people who should be considered for 2028. But a real favor this book does for him is it really does put some daylight between him and Harris and Biden, which I think is much needed. I mean, I would almost say the same for Josh Shapiro.
25:10Carlos Lozada:In some ways, it kind of does him some favors and makes Harris look pretty petty and small. So we have no way of knowing how any of this is going to play out now. But, you know.
25:20Lydia Polgreen:Like for the 15 people who actually pay attention to this book, among other things. Not that it's not going to be a bestseller and have its own Netflix series. It's selling. The book is selling.
25:31Michelle Cottle:The book is selling.
25:32Lydia Polgreen:How many copies is this book selling if you're talking about, like, the American public? Nobody reads political books.
25:37Michelle Cottle:I refuse to believe that.
25:39Lydia Polgreen:Except you, Carlos. You are here so that you can tell America what they need to know.
25:44Michelle Cottle:I'm going to tell you right now. Oh, the Kindle version is number one.
25:48Lydia Polgreen:Like in the world?
25:50Michelle Cottle:And number one on Amazon. Yes. Not just like those made up categories that they have. My book always does great in political literature criticism, like these made up, you know, things that they.
26:01Lydia Polgreen:I love that category. That's my favorite category. Well, then that that clinches it. She is on she's on a glide path.
26:08Michelle Cottle:Kamala Harris is laughing all the way to the bank.
26:10Lydia Polgreen:She is on a glide path to be the next president. So, Lydia, I love your idea that the major use for this book is to make the people she goes after look better and improve their prospects. for a political future. That's a very weird answer to my question of what's the point, but I actually kind of like it. Beyond that, though, do we think she's trying to lay the groundwork for running in 2028? Is that what this is?
26:40Michelle Cottle:Well, you know, to put out the best possible case for her, she has gotten closer each time. In 2019, she didn't even make it to the primaries. You know, she didn't even make it to the to the first actual primary vote. And then in 2024, she became the nominee. So, you know, baby steps. But I think there's a mantra. There's a political slogan. Anyone who thinks they should be president of the United States usually doesn't stop thinking they should be president of the United States. And I'm not a betting man. I hate all those betting commercials on TV sports broadcasts. But if I were betting for 2028, the Democratic nominee, I would take the field over Kamala Harris.
27:25Lydia Polgreen:But you think she's going to be in there? You think she's going to be in there five?
27:29Michelle Cottle:I suspect she's going to run and then she'll drop out.
27:32Lydia Polgreen:Lydia, what about you?
27:33Carlos Lozada:I think that if Kamala Harris honestly wanted to compete for the 2028 nomination, I think her best bet would have been to write a searingly honest, burn it all down, tell the truth about her own mistakes, her own, you know, the things that she learned, why coloring inside the lines, you know, led to her defeat. show some real humility, but also some real kind of spine in saying, like, I took bad advice and I'm never going to do that again. And here's how I would have done it differently. I think there was another book that she could have written that could have been a real scorcher, you know, really indicting the Democratic establishment and saying, like, I know this because I was a part of it.
28:26Carlos Lozada:And I think for me, you know, after Biden dropped out, I think I felt a certain amount of a projection of those hopes onto, you know, personally a projection of those hopes onto Gabla Harris that perhaps she would start to speak the truth. But I think this book reveals that the truth is that she's a, you know, kind of bog standard politician who just doesn't really have a lot of ideas and, you know, worked her way up inside the technocratic machine that is the contemporary Democratic Party. And I don't think a person like that should be the nominee in 2028. And I, you know, certainly pray that they won't be the nominee in 2028, regardless of who the Republicans nominate.
29:09Lydia Polgreen:Yeah, I think you've hit on it right there, which is even if she does have ideas, I think she's too cautious to let those off the chain. Yeah. So I think that this book is a reflection of what her shortcomings as a politician are in general.
29:25Michelle Cottle:Yeah, no, I just wanted to say I have right here, sorry for getting off screen for a moment. I have her two prior books, Smart on Crime and The Truths We Hold. And now 107 Days, I've read all of Kamala Harris's books, all three of them. She was never going to write the scorcher that you wanted, Lydia, for precisely the reason that you give, right? That she is a cautious party bureaucrat. And bureaucrat is I don't mean that in the most pejorative sense. I mean, I mean, it's pretty pejorative. She's not. No, you know, like, you know, Max Weber didn't write about it as a bureaucracy, as a pejorative.
30:05Michelle Cottle:It's not always a negative.
30:06Lydia Polgreen:But as a presidential candidate characteristic.
30:09Michelle Cottle:She's you know, she's someone who works her way up the greasy pole of party politics. And she's done that in general in a cautious manner. And in a sense, this new book is consistent with that. It goes a little further than some of the others, but it's still true to kind of that kind of politician that she's been.
30:32Lydia Polgreen:Okay, we're going to let you have the last word, but now to get the unappealing image of a greasy political poll out of everybody's mind, please, Scott, we're going to do what we usually do to end these conversations, which is I need a recommendation from both of you for listeners. Lydia, you want to go first? Sure.
30:54Carlos Lozada:So we've all been talking a lot about political violence in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. And I feel like there's been a lot of talk thrown around about, you know, which side is more violent and is this better or worse than the 1960s and 70s? And there are lots of great books about the political violence in the 60s and 70s. But I wanted to recommend to our listeners my absolute favorite, which is The Skies Belong to Us, which is a book by a journalist named Brendan Kerner who tells the story of the skyjacking craze in the 1960s and 70s. It's great because it gives you both a portrait of what the political atmosphere was like at the time, you know, all of the mail bombings and the weather underground and all that kind of stuff.
31:42Carlos Lozada:But it really focuses in on these skyjackings and what it was like to fly at that time. But I think that if you want an actually incredibly entertaining but also like really, really insightful book that gives a unique window into that period of American life, it's one of my absolute favorites. And I've been I picked it up again recently because I love it so much. Love it.
32:06Lydia Polgreen:Carlos, if you tell me Kamala's memoir, I'm just going to cut that. I'm just going to cut the camera.
32:11Michelle Cottle:No, I had something that I was going to say. But Lydia, you said something in the middle of this conversation that made me change my mind. So I'm going to call an audible and I'm going to read a poem that. Yeah, I'm going to read a poem. This is awesome. It's called The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered by Clive James.
32:34Lydia Polgreen:Okay.
32:35Michelle Cottle:The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered, and I am pleased. In vast quantities it has been remaindered, like a van load of counterfeit that has been seized and sits in piles in a police warehouse. My enemy's much-prized effort sits in piles, and the kind of bookshop we're remaindering occurs. Great square stacks of rejected books, and between them, aisles, one passes down reflecting on life's vanities, pausing to remember all those thoughtful reviews, lavish to no avail upon one's enemy's book. For behold, here is that book, among these ranks and banks of duds, these ponderous and seemingly irreducible cairns of complete stiffs.
33:13Michelle Cottle:The book of my enemy has been remaindered, and I rejoice. It has gone with bowed head like a defeated legion beneath the yoke. What avail him now his awards and prizes? The praise expended upon his meticulous technique, his individual new voice? Knocked into the middle of next week, his brainchild now consorts with the bad buys, the sinkers, clinkers, dogs and dregs, the Edsels of the world of movable type, the bummers that no amount of hype could shift, the unbudgable turkeys. I'm going to stop there. There's two more chunks of it. But Clive James is a genius. He's an absolute genius writer. And when you talked about how Kamala Harris's book would one day end up in the remaindered pile, all I could think of was The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered by Clive James, which you should all, any author among you or reader among you should check it out.
34:03Lydia Polgreen:Okay. All right. Well, I'm going to lean into my Washington nerdy roots and recommend a Netflix show called The Residents. Have you guys watched this? Carlos, you never watch anything.
34:17Michelle Cottle:I've never even heard of it.
34:18Lydia Polgreen:Lydia, did you watch this? watched it loved it it's brilliant right so it's you know produced by chondaland how do you hear about these things anyway what do you mean how do i hear because i live in america and we watch tv especially streaming say so it uh dropped in march are you othering me it dropped in march go go go now your homework is to watch this it dropped back in march but you know we're like six months too late to everything a lot of the time it is a murder mystery set in the White House. The main usher, the chief usher of the White House, played brilliantly by Giancarlo Esposito, who's a genius with everything, winds up dead.
34:59Lydia Polgreen:And at the state dinner for the Australian prime minister, they have to lock down the White House and they bring in a very eccentric detective named Cordelia Cupp, who is played by Uzo Aduba, and she is absolute genius. She just takes every single line they give her and makes it sing. And, you know, if you're in journalism or political journalism or politics, often I tend to approach shows that try to dig into that world with like an eye roll and like they take themselves too seriously or they're way over the top or whatever. This is just daffy enough and doesn't take itself too seriously, but is just this fantastic murder mystery.
35:42Lydia Polgreen:And I highly recommend. I was very sad to hear that they're not picking it up for another season. I'm very bitter about this.
35:50Carlos Lozada:So it's a really fun show.
35:52Lydia Polgreen:It is great. So Carlos, you should watch that.
35:55Michelle Cottle:I will check this out.
35:56Lydia Polgreen:All right, then. I think we're going to leave it there. Thank you guys so much for coming in to talk this through with me. That was so great to be reunited with you two.
36:04Michelle Cottle:Great to see you again.
36:06Carlos Lozada:Move forever. Thank you.
36:39Lydia Polgreen:The Opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Vishak Adarba, Christina Samulewski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin and Alison Bruzek. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Saburo, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amin Sahota. The Fact Check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samulewski The director of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser
From the publisher
Kamala Harris’s new memoir, “107 Days,” reads like a book of excuses. In this episode, the Opinion national politics writer Michelle Cottle and the Opinion columnists Carlos Lozada and Lydia Polgreen unpack why it misses the mark, and what it says about the “big, messy battle” Democrats need to have to find fresh leadership in 2028.
Thoughts? Email us at theopinions@nytimes.com.
This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Vishakha Darbha. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. The rest of the show's production team includes Derek Arthur and Jillian Weinberger. Mixing by Efim Shapiro and Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Pat McCusker and Aman Sahota. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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