Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has said Kamala Harris will “have to answer” for not publicly alerting people to Joe Biden’s declining ability to serve during his term. Shapiro, a candidate to become Harris’s running mate before she chose Tim Walz, made the remarks on a political podcast when asked about Harris’s memoir, 107 Days.
In the book, Harris draws a distinction between Biden’s ability to govern and to campaign, expressing concerns about the latter. She also describes Biden’s decision to seek a second term as based on “recklessness.” Shapiro said he had not read the account but added: “She’s going to have to answer to how she was in the room and yet never said anything publicly.”
Shapiro noted that he was “very vocal” privately with Biden and his staff about concerns over his fitness to run. “I was direct with them,” he said. Harris writes that she feared confronting Biden would be seen as “incredibly self-serving” and “poisonous disloyalty.”
In the memoir, Harris also writes about her consideration of Pete Buttigieg as a running mate, saying he would have been “the ideal partner” if she had been “a straight white man,” but that adding a gay man to the ticket was “too big a risk.” Buttigieg told Politico he was “surprised” by the passage, arguing that voters’ trust is earned “based mostly on what they think you’re going to do for their lives, not on categories.”
On countering Donald Trump, Shapiro advocated for a unifying approach, pointing to his own victories in Pennsylvania by “bringing Republicans and Democrats and independents together,” rather than fighting “fire with fire.”
