(AURN News) — When President Joe Biden stepped aside in the 2024 race, Vice President Kamala Harris expected his full and immediate backing. But, according to the new book “Fight,” by political journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, that support didn’t come right away.
The authors describe a chaotic series of conversations between Biden and Harris in which he initially refused to endorse her in his public withdrawal statement. Harris, concerned about locking down the delegates quickly, warned that delay could lead to a fractured convention and other Democrats entering the race.
“She’s like, ‘Dude, get out of the way,’” Jonathan Allen told AURN News. “She’s like, ‘I need to make calls… I need your endorsement.’”
Jonathan Allen recalled Harris making the stakes clear: “If I don’t wrap up the delegates quickly, there’s going to be blood on the floor in the party. Other people are going to jump in. Barack Obama‘s going to get some sort of open convention going. It’s gonna be an unholy disaster.”
Initially, Biden held firm.
“He’s like, ‘I deserve to have a few days to kind of bask in the glow of handing over power, and calling myself George Washington,’” Parnes said.
Allen added that both sides scrambled as the clock ticked down.
“They get off the phone and it’s unresolved,” he said. “And they’re like back and forth with their aides. She’s in the vice president’s residence in her personal quarters, and Biden’s in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, at his beach house. And it’s just like total chaos and it’s all about Joe Biden having Joe Biden’s last moment in the sun.”
Eventually, Biden agreed to endorse Harris—but not in the same statement.
“They ended up with two statements—him getting out and then him endorsing her about 30 minutes later,” Allen said.
But Harris’s challenges didn’t end there. Even after securing the nomination, she found herself leading a campaign still controlled by Biden’s old guard.
“She inherits a campaign that’s very much his and not her own,” Amie Parnes told AURN News. “Her people are getting kind of shoved to the side and relegated even to a back room. The other aides that had been around for Joe Biden are still leading the campaign.”
The book also outlines how Harris faced not just logistical problems, but resistance from party elites.
“There’s a real separation between the party voters and the party elites,” Allen added.
“The Democratic voters were perfectly happy to get behind Kamala Harris once she locked down those delegates,” Allen said. “But the problem she had was with those other leaders that didn’t have faith in her,” he said.
Despite the chaos, Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, believed victory was within reach.
“She did even think that she would win that night,” Parnes said. “She goes into election night, she and Tim Walz, her running mate, they go into election night thinking that they’ve won, that they are going to win.”
But the late transition, internal dysfunction, and resistance from power brokers proved difficult to overcome.
“She might not have been their first choice. Might not have been their fifth,” Allen said.
“But once she got there, the Democratic Party voters were happy to get behind her.”
“Fight” is available now and offers an amazing insider account of the 2024 presidential race, based on interviews with more than 150 figures inside the Biden, Harris, and Trump campaigns. This book is a representation of what true journalism is and ought to be.
Click play to listen to the AURN News report from Jamie Jackson:
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