Once a news junkie, I’ve steered clear of news and politics since 2016. I also grew up just outside New York City. I heard stories about Donald Trump back in my teen years, none of which were flattering. I am appalled that this man has been elected not once, but twice. For my mental health, I’ve steered clear of political or current event books. I just get angrier and more depressed. I’ve made an exception recently when a couple of books were highly recommended in a book group I’m in. One of those was 107 Days by Kamala Harris.

The title refers to the number of days between when President Joe Biden stepped aside as a candidate for President in 2024 and that year’s election day. That was all the time Kamala Harris was given to mount a campaign for President. In political terms, that’s not a long time at all, and after reading 107 Days, I understand just why.

Let me preface this by saying I wasn’t a fan of how the 2024 election was handled by Democrats. We have a primary for a reason. At the same time, I understand that sometimes circumstances mean we have to go with the flow. My feeling was that if there were problems with Joe Biden as a candidate, then he should have bowed out before the primaries and given more candidates a chance. However, in a choice between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, I’d choose Kamala Harris any day of the week. I’d pick a potato over Donald Trump.

Harris details the events that took place that thrust her into the role of Presidential candidate. In particular, there’s that debate with Trump that Biden stumbled through. She’s fair to Biden in that she explains that right after the debate, he was diagnosed with COVID and was likely feeling some of the effects at the time the debate took place. Still, the damage was done, and the Democratic National Committee saw donations dry up as the wealthier donors to the Party didn’t want to throw money away.

Harris was then the anointed one, and was thrust into a whirlwind of a campaign that criss-crossed the nation while at the same time having to attend to her duties as Vice President. Reading this, I could appreciate what it meant to the people she worked with on the campaign and their families, as well as Harris’ family. Harris details choices she made, for better or worse, and owns them, rather than blaming a mysterious “staffer” when things went wrong. Even when there was someone else at fault, Harris doesn’t dwell on it, preferring to just move ahead.

Now knowing a lot more about Kamala Harris, I do think she would have made a great President. When she lost, her first thought was, “What’s going to happen to our country?” rather than anything about herself and her career. As a former prosecutor and attorney general, she had met men like Donald Trump in the courtroom and knew it was going to be bad. There’s an afterword that reflects a bit on what she’s seen happen since Trump was inaugurated for his second term, but the book was published in the fall of 2025, so it didn’t cover some of the worst we’ve seen since then.

Kamala Harris narrates the audiobook. Here I get to be a bit catty – I don’t really like her voice. I also can’t imagine the book having the same impact if it were read by someone else, so I got over it. There are slight nuances to her voice that convey the emotions of the different situations, and I don’t have to wonder if they are accurate when the author is also the narrator.

Listening to 107 Days, I am sad for what this country could have had, the same way I am sad that Hillary Clinton never got a chance to be President. Both of these women were smart and compassionate, something lacking in the current occupant of the White House. I highly recommend this audiobook, as I think it helps people who don’t know Kamala Harris all that well get to know her much better. She wasn’t just the candidate who wasn’t Trump. She wasn’t just the candidate who had the -D after her name. She was actually a great choice for President, and we would have a much different world had she been elected.