Looking back now, the 61-year-old Democrat said that suppressing others’ success doesn’t protect your own—it just undermines the entire mission.
“It’s actually quite provincial thinking when you’re talking about the stakes that were at play in our administration and, of course, in the election.”
Harris wasn’t blind to the way she was handled by presidential staffers—but she didn’t understand the full extent until after the election.
“It was clear to me in terms of just the challenges with getting them to uplift, getting them to defend, especially when there were inaccurate, unfair attacks,” Harris said. “To the extent that the vice president is being attacked, resources were available but not used to defend the vice president in the way that they could have.”
Harris drew the conclusion that staffers were holding her back in an effort to set Biden up to win his second election. But when he dropped out of the running just four months shy of the U.S. presidential voting day, Harris was rushed to pick up the pieces. She waged her campaign as the Democratic nominee, but lost out to sitting President Trump. The damage from Biden’s inner circle suppressing her achievements and letting negative narratives run wild was done.
In other words, success isn’t a limited resource—it’s a pie big enough for everyone to get a slice. Now, the Democratic Party has learned that lesson the hard way. “It was counterproductive,” Harris concluded. “We rose and fell together.”
