Biden issued chilling 3-word warning to Kamala Harris before her first debate with Trump, claims new book
WASHINGTON, DC: Former vice president Kamala Harris might have been hoping to put some serious space between herself and Joe Biden’s baggage ahead of her debate with Donald Trump, but Biden had other ideas.
Instead of giving her the green light to craft her own identity, the now-82-year-old former president shut it down with just three words: “No daylight, kid.” And just like that, any hopes Harris had of stepping out from Biden’s shadow went up in smoke, a new book has revealed.
Meanwhile, the wreckage of the failed Harris-Tim Walz campaign has left Democrats passing on the blame like it’s a hot potato. From the candidates themselves to their top aides, no one is walking away unscathed.
But if you ask insiders, a big chunk of the blame is landing squarely on Biden—whose unpopularity became an anchor dragging down his would-be successor.
Joe Biden demands loyalty
Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes's new book titled 'FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House' paints a picture of a president unwilling to let his protege carve her own path, even if it hurt her in the long run.
"Donald Trump and Kamala Harris both understood the importance of being seen as the bigger change agent," the authors wrote in an excerpt obtained by The Hill. "For Trump, that meant continuing to promise an antidote to the Biden-Harris years. For Harris, there was more flexibility to define her brand of change."
That meant she had options. Harris could risk looking like a total hypocrite by distancing herself from Biden’s policies, despite having supported them as VP. Or she could take a softer approach, finding new issues to campaign on without throwing Biden under the bus.
She could even "rely on voters to see her gender, her genes, and her 'lived experience' — a middle-class upbringing, schools outside the Ivy League, and a career as a prosecutor — as symbols of change," Allen and Parnes explained.
But Biden and his inner circle weren’t about to let her take the first route. On the day of her first debate with Trump, Biden gave her a "pep talk" that included handing down marching orders to protect his legacy. "No daylight, kid," he reportedly told the then-59-year-old Harris.
For Biden, this wasn’t new. Back in 2008, he had used the same phrase to glue John McCain to George W Bush when running alongside Barack Obama. This time, though, he was making sure Harris remained tied to him—whether she liked it or not, according to the excerpt.
Kamala Harris’ team struggled to shake off Joe Biden’s influence
Joe Biden’s people were reportedly still deeply embedded in the Kamala Harris campaign, making it nearly impossible for her to break away publicly.
Harris' advisor Sean Clegg—who wasn’t exactly beloved by Biden’s camp—tried steering her in a different direction during a debate prep session with Tim Walz. When Harris started listing off her and Biden’s accomplishments, Clegg jumped in.
"Wait, wait, wait! Let’s not do this. Let’s not go down memory lane," he reportedly said.
Apparently, that didn’t sit well with longtime Democratic strategist Stephanie Cutter, who promptly booted Clegg from future media prep sessions.
Meanwhile, Harris aides privately griped that Biden’s team wasn’t working with them, still bitter over the fact that their boss had been forced to drop out.
David Plouffe sounds off
David Plouffe—former president Barack Obama’s former campaign mastermind and a senior advisor to Kamala Harris—had his own gripes about Joe Biden’s handling of the election. Specifically, that the former president should have bowed out sooner.
He called Biden’s refusal to step aside earlier in the race “the cardinal sin” of the election.
"When I got in, it was the first time I saw the actual numbers under the hood. They were pretty gruesome," Plouffe admitted to The Atlantic.
"The Sun Belt was worse than the Blue Wall, but the Blue Wall was bad. And, demographically, young voters across the board—Hispanic voters, Black voters, Asian voters—were in really terrible shape," he added.
"When the switch happened, some of that stuff got a little bit better, but nowhere near where we ended up or where we needed to be," he added. "This was a rescue mission. It was catastrophic in terms of where it was."
It wasn’t until July 21—after relentless pressure from party insiders—that Biden finally stepped aside.
But even then, there was no time for a real primary battle. Instead, Democrats rushed to crown Harris as the nominee, hoping to avoid a drawn-out contest that could hand Trump the election.
Too little, too late
Plouffe admitted that no Democrat was winning this election under the circumstances. But things might have looked different if there had been a real primary process.
"If we had a primary in which a bunch of people ran and auditioned … through that process, whoever emerged … would have been a more fully formed person, would have had more time to mount a general election campaign," he explained. "[Not having that process] is the cardinal sin."
Instead, they were forced to cram an entire campaign into just over 100 days.
"Our first week, it was like, 'Well, we need a biography ad, we need to talk about the border, we need to lay out an economic contrast, we need to get health care in there, abortion,'" Plouffe recalled.
"If you have six, seven, eight months, you storyboard all this stuff, you have a narrative arc. Everything was smashed and collided here," he added.
In the end, Harris and Walz lost every single swing state to Trump. They suffered a historic Electoral College blowout. They even became the first Democratic ticket to lose the popular vote since 2004—and only the second since 1988.
The aftermath was both the Biden and Harris camps pointing fingers over the staggering $1 billion in donor money that went up in flames. Walz also admitted that the Democrats’ top-ticket implosion was a "mess"—and put some of the blame on himself and Harris.
