Former Vice President Kamala Harris is pushing back against the idea that her brief 2024 presidential campaign represented a “glass cliff” moment for women in politics. Speaking with Fortune Editor in Chief Alyson Shontell, Harris said she rejects the notion entirely.
“A cliff to me suggests finality, and I’m not into that,” she said.
Harris, who recently decided not to enter the California governor’s race, is instead focused on the release of her new political memoir, 107 Days, which chronicles her short-lived campaign against President Donald Trump. The book, already one of the year’s top-selling memoirs, offers a candid account of Harris’s historic but turbulent run for the presidency—the shortest in modern U.S. history.
Harris made history as the first woman, first Black woman, and first South Asian American to serve as vice president (2021–2025). She was also California’s first female, Black, and South Asian attorney general and the first Indian American senator. Yet despite breaking numerous barriers, she ultimately fell short of shattering the nation’s highest one: the presidency.
In 107 Days, Harris reflects on the challenges of stepping out from President Joe Biden’s shadow after he withdrew from the race in July 2024. She writes of struggling to define her own narrative and connect with key voter groups in a compressed timeline. She also reveals frustrations with leading Democrats—including Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and governors J.B. Pritzker and Gavin Newsom—for hesitating to back her candidacy.
Quoting Obama, she recalls him telling her, “Saddle up! Joe did what I hoped he would do. But you have to earn it. Michelle and I are supportive but not going to put a finger on the scale right now.”
Harris also criticizes the Democratic Party’s deference to Biden’s decision-making, writing, “We all said, ‘It’s Joe and Jill’s decision,’ like a mantra… Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness.”
Throughout her campaign, Harris focused on voting rights, gun safety, reproductive freedom, and strengthening the middle class—issues she says remain central to her political future.
