Failed Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris was so convinced by the hype that she was “completely shocked” by her decisive loss on election night, the author of a new book about the 2024 election said.
The former veep’s hopes that she would make history as the nation’s first woman president came crashing down as election results rolled in with President Donald J. Trump sweeping every swing state, leaving Harris and running mate Tim Walz on the receiving end of an electoral beatdown that left their party in such disarray that it may never recover.
“She was completely shocked, and Tim Walz was shocked,” Amie Parnes, the co-author of the new book “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,” told Puck News reporter Tara Palmeri during Thursday’s edition of her “Somebody’s Gotta Win with Tara Palmeri” podcast.
Parnes told the host that Walz was so “stunned” that he couldn’t even speak. “He has no words,” she said of “Tampon Tim,” who sat in his hotel room in disbelief as staffers attempted to explain the grim reality to a man whose selection for the ticket caught many by surprise.
“And people are kind of explaining to him, same thing with [Harris]. And she’s like, ‘Are you sure? Have we done a recount? Should we do a recount?’” Parnes added.
“They thought that they were going to win,” she said. “And so, you know, when they come back now and say, ‘Oh no, we didn’t really have a chance.’ No, that’s not what they were thinking. They thought they were going to win.”
She reported that some members of Team Kamala suspected that they were being “gaslit” by the campaign’s top officials who expressed confidence that “things were looking good” for Harris, who until she was swapped out with Joe Biden after his disastrous CNN debate, was widely seen as a laughing stock, even by her fellow Democrats.
Kamala “bought the hype,” according to Parnes, and thought that she was on a path to the Oval Office.
“Kamala Harris was looking at her crowd size, and they felt like the vibe was strong and people were saying, ‘Oh, we have more boots on the ground. We’re doing better in fundraising,’” she told Palmeri. “And she bought all of that. She bought the hype, and so did a lot of people in the campaign.”
Parnes, who writes for The Hill, and co-author Jonathan Allen of NBC News have been making the media rounds to promote their book, which was released this week.
According to the authors, Harris told friends she believed that she would have won the election if she had more time and scapegoated her former boss for not dropping out sooner.
“She could have won, she told friends, if only the election was later in the calendar — or she got in earlier. In other words, Joe Biden was to blame,” they wrote in the book, according to Fox News.
But some begged to differ.
“That is f—ing bonkers,” one of the friends reportedly said. “If Election Day was October first, we might have actually somehow pulled it off. Shorter was actually better, not longer.”
One of the former candidate’s advisor believed that her problem was less a lack of time than it was a matter of “substance.”
“I don’t think we needed more time… We needed more substance. And she did not have more substance,” the book quotes the advisor.
Former President Barack Obama was so unimpressed by Harris that he worked behind the scenes to knife her, according to Parnes’ co-author.
Obama worked behind the scenes to knife Kamala, new book’s author claims https://t.co/bn6hYspxTh
— BPR (@BIZPACReview) April 2, 2025
“President Obama absolutely did not think that Joe Biden should continue, according to our sources close to President Obama,” Allen said during an MSNBC appearance to hawk the book. “And he also didn’t want Kamala Harris to be the replacement for Biden.”
“He didn’t think that she was the best choice for Democrats, and he worked really behind the scenes for a long time to try to have a mini-primary, or an open convention, or a mini-primary leading to an open convention, did not have faith in her ability to win the election,” the author continued. “As it turned out, she didn’t win, but he was really working against her.”
In its description of “Fight,” which was published on Monday, Amazon calls the election “arguably the most consequential contest in American history. The ride was so wild that it forced a sitting president to drop his re-election bid, a once and future president to survive felony convictions and a would-be assassin’s bullet, and a vice president, unexpectedly thrust into the arena, to mount an unprecedented 107-day campaign to lead the free world.”
“Fight is the backstage story of bloodsport politics in its rawest form—the clawing, backstabbing, and rabble-rousing that drove Donald Trump into the White House and Democrats into the wilderness. At every turn, the combatants went for the jugular, whether they were facing down rivals in the other party or their own,” the description reads.
DONATE TO BIZPAC REVIEW
Please help us! If you are fed up with letting radical big tech execs, phony fact-checkers, tyrannical liberals and a lying mainstream media have unprecedented power over your news please consider making a donation to BPR to help us fight them. Now is the time. Truth has never been more critical!
Success! Thank you for donating. Please share BPR content to help combat the lies.
Chris Donaldson is an ordinary American who is concerned about rampant corruption as well as the ongoing attacks on our way of life by those who have contempt for our hard-earned freedoms. A Navy veteran, he has been a frequent contributor to conservative websites and resides in Florida.
We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.
