Harris admits she was ‘reckless’ in not challenging Biden’s decision to run for reelection

(NEW YORK) — Former Vice President Kamala Harris, on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Tuesday, said she does regret not personally challenging former President Joe Biden’s decision to run for reelection.

In an interview with “Good Morning America” co-anchor Michael Strahan, Harris said it was “reckless” of her to not raise her concerns with Biden choosing to run for reelection.

“Do you regret not voicing your opinion in that moment?” Strahan asked Harris, who wrote in her campaign memoir “107 Days” out Tuesday that the reelection decision was Joe and Jill Biden’s to make.

“Yes,” Harris said, “and I, and I actually have reflected on that, and I’ve written about that.”

“Would that have mattered if you did?” Strahan asked Harris.

“I don’t know,” Harris replied. “I don’t know, but I can only take responsibility for myself and on reflection, you know, and I talk about it in the context of asking a question of myself, ‘was that grace to not bring it up to him, or was it reckless?’

She added, “And on my part, I do reflect on that and feel that it was — it was a recklessness about not raising it with him.”

She said she felt raising her concerns with Biden would be seen as “self-serving.”

“I talk about what was going through my head, right? And what was going through my head to not bring it up was that it would come off as being very self-serving, and therefore maybe lack the credibility that it deserved. But I do think about it. I do think about it,” she said.

“And I also say, though, and I speak extensively about this, my concern about him running for reelection was completely separate from my admiration and knowledge about his capacity to serve as president United States, which was consistent and never wavered,” Harris added.

On “The View” later Tuesday morning, Harris reflected on her interview on the program during the 2024 campaign in which it took her nearly 30 minutes to answer what differentiated her with Biden, saying at the time, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”

“That day in that interview, for me, really was symbolic of the issue. It was not — it did not create the issue, but it was symbolic of the issue, which is that I am a loyal person, and I didn’t fully appreciate how much people wanted to know there was a difference between me and President Biden,” Harris said. “I thought it was obvious, and I didn’t want to offer a difference in a way that would be received or suggested to be a criticism.”

Harris said she thought talking about her policy proposals on the campaign trail was enough.

“I thought I was making the point and I realize now that I didn’t fully appreciate that how much of an issue it was yet that President Biden was deeply unpopular,” Harris said. “I did realize that.”

Asked by co-host Sunny Hostin — who asked about differences with Biden last year — if she thought her answer “tipped the election,” Harris said, “No.”

Co-host Joy Behar joked, “Good, because Sunny doesn’t want to take the blame.”

Behar told Harris she thinks race and sex were factors in the former vice president’s loss and asked her if America would elect a woman in Behar’s lifetime.

“I believe that we will,” Harris, who largely avoided talking about her race or sex during the 2024 campaign, told Behar.

“Every office I’ve held, I’ve been the first, usually the first woman, and then often the first woman and the first person of color,” Harris goes on to say. “The only time, actually I was the second, when I was the second black woman ever elected to the United States Senate in its hundreds of years history. So I’m not, I’m not naive — race and gender do play a factor in some people’s minds about how they vote. But my history tells me, because I have been the first in all of those that people ultimately want to know that this is the best person to do the job, and that’s their focus, and that’s how I’ve always run. I’ve never run as a woman or as a person of color because I believe I’m the best to do the job.”

Looking ahead, Harris said the Democratic Party needs to focus on Americans’ immediate needs rather than longer-term projects like infrastructure, taking aim at the Biden administration’s messaging.

“I think there’s some work to be done, which includes one of the things that I think the ’24 election made very clear, is the American people want their immediate needs met,” Harris said. “And you know, we paid a lot of good attention and time on issues like the infrastructure bill. If we had done it differently, and I think we should have considered doing it differently, we would have instead, in the Build Back Better bill, put the family plan before we did that. And so we would have done affordable child care and paid leave and address some of the more immediate needs of people.”

“So going forward, I think that has to be an imperative. We will have the plan for what needs to happen in the long term, because those are the most intractable issues, but we need to meet the immediate needs of people,” Harris added.

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