Harris denounces 'recklessness' of deferring to Biden on second term

WASHINGTON

Former Vice President Kamala Harris criticized the "recklessness" that she and other Democrats exhibited when they deferred to ex-President Joe Biden as he sought a second term in office, according to remarks published Wednesday.

“'It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.' We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized. Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness," Harris wrote in excerpts from her upcoming book 107 Days.

"The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision," she added in excerpts published by the Atlantic magazine.

Harris sought to brush off criticism that Biden's age, 81 at the time, had impaired him from being able to execute the duties of his office, but she acknowledged that his age was quickly catching up to him.

"On his worst day, he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best. But at 81, Joe got tired," she wrote. "That’s when his age showed in physical and verbal stumbles."

Still, she acknowledged internal doubts she had about the prospects for Biden securing a second term, even against a candidate he had previously bested at the polls.

"During all those months of growing panic, should I have told Joe to consider not running? Perhaps," she wrote. "But the American people had chosen him before in the same matchup. Maybe he was right to believe that they would do so again."

Harris said that she was "in the worst position to make the case that he should drop out," because she believed Biden take umbrage with any effort to do so, and would view it as disloyalty.

"I knew it would come off to him as incredibly self-serving if I advised him not to run. He would see it as naked ambition, perhaps as poisonous disloyalty, even if my only message was: Don’t let the other guy win," she wrote.