One day out of 107

Oh what a time to be alive in America. I’m reading 107 Days, Kamala Harris’s memoir of her 107-day presidential campaign and my gosh, I cannot believe that this all happened just a short year ago. Less than one short year, we are 70 percent down the road toward the fascism finish line, and the rest of the road is downhill and icy (in more ways than one). 

I was about to say that I can’t believe how bad it’s actually been, but I absolutely can and do believe it. I’ve been expecting the worst since 2015, pretty much since the day Trump came down that infamous escalator. Ten years later, he is still wreaking havoc and still riding escalators and every day is proof of the idea that you can be shocked and unsurprised all at once. Every day, I’m shocked by what these people are doing to this country, but I’m never surprised. 

*****

One of the many things that I find really humbling is that when I read books about recent history, I will realize as I’m reading that I remember little or nothing about episodes that were huge news just five or ten years ago. Same thing goes for biographies of contemporary figures, people I think I know a lot about - I find that I know pretty much nothing. But I read VP Harris’s earlier memoir, The Truths We Hold, just a few months ago, so I was pretty solid on her biographical details. As for the historical details of the 2024 campaign, I found that I remembered pretty much everything Kamala Harris describes almost exactly as she describes it, and as though it all happened yesterday. I mean, it DID happen yesterday, relatively speaking - it’s not even a year since the 2024 election. But it also seems like part of a bygone era. When I look back to the very recent time just before the 2024 election, it feels like I’m looking across a deep chasm, like we have crossed a line from the before time to now that we’ll never be able to cross back again. 

*****

107 Days is written in short diary-like chapters, titled for the number of days remaining until the election. Most of the entries have an in-the-moment or just after the moment quality. The book reads as though Kamala Harris still hasn’t really processed the events of the summer and fall of 2024, and she probably hasn’t. Most of us haven’t. Some critics have complained that she blames others for the campaign’s (few and far between) mistakes and for the “loss” to Trump, but that is nonsense. I think Kamala Harris was near-perfect in that campaign, but she made a few minor mistakes as anyone would, and it feels like she’s still beating herself up over those mistakes. 

A few takeaways: Tim Walz is great but she probably should have gone with Mark Kelly or Josh Shapiro or even Pete Buttigieg even though he wasn’t on the short list. The Venn diagram of people who won’t vote for a Black woman and people who won’t vote for a gay man is a closed circle, so Buttigieg would not have harmed the ticket, and he is the smartest, sharpest politician in the United States. Mark Kelly is also brilliant, and he’s tougher than Walz. Kamala is 100 percent right that Tim Walz was far too nice to JD Vance during that debate; and that’s partly because he is a decent man who is nice to everyone but it’s more because (like a lot of politicians) he is still playing by the rules of two decades ago when we thought that “both sides” had the country’s best interests at heart. This is no longer the case. 

*****

My son had a swim meet at Gallaudet University the weekend before the election last year. Gallaudet has an absolutely terrible swim team but the Gallaudet meet is great. Some of their swimmers are completely new to the sport, and it’s amazing watching them compete. Last year, a Gallaudet swimmer who is almost 30 years old took over two minutes to swim the 100 freestyle. Both teams applauded enthusiastically as he finally finished, jubilant and exhausted. 

We walked from the NoMa-Gallaudet Metro stop to the Gallaudet aquatic center, just about a mile. It was a gorgeous autumn day. Harris-Walz signs were everywhere, right next to Halloween decorations that hadn’t been taken down yet. People were out walking and sitting on their front porches. People smiled and waved at us as we walked by, and we smiled and waved back. Marymount won the meet, of course, because a lot of high school teams would beat Gallaudet. The walk back to the Metro was just as lovely as the walk to Gallaudet, with the autumn sky turning pink and orange and purple and the leaves crunching underfoot on the tree-lined neighborhood streets. But that’s not why it was a perfect day. 

*****

107 Days does not end happily, as we all know. As much as I enjoyed this book, I did not enjoy reliving the night of November 6, 2024, when Kamala Harris and her team and all of her supporters watching the returns on TV realized with growing apprehension and eventual horror that Donald Trump had “won” the election and that we were facing a second Trump presidency. And everyone knew that the second Trump term would be far worse than the first, and everyone who knew that was right. 

When I think about how much has happened in just a few short months, I think back to that Saturday in November, walking the neighborhood streets from the Metro to Gallaudet and back and smiling back at all of the smiling, hopeful faces, and feeling not exactly sure but extremely optimistic about the prospect of Kamala Harris as our next President. It was a beautiful day. 

Bibliography 2025 - BLTN Edition

I never did finish my 2025 book list. I’ve become very lax about tracking and documenting my reading, and now I’m looking at a list of what I read last year and I’m finding two things: There are several books that I read and vividly remember but never added them to my list; and there are books that are on my list but I barely remember a word of them. 

Does it even matter? Some people just read books and move on and never even think about adding titles to a list or writing down their thoughts about the books they read. Those people aren’t me, though. It bothers me that I haven’t published a 2025 book list and so I’m going to do it now, just as we’re approaching the middle of 2026. Better late than never. So here’s the list: 

The Hard Crowd (Rachel Kushner)

We Want Everything (Nanni Balestrini). I’d never have picked this up if I hadn’t read Rachel Kushner. It’s about social upheaval and revolution in 1970s Italy, and it’s great. Whoever came up with the phrase “Become ungovernable” must have read Nanni Balestrini. 

The Let Them Theory (Mel Robbins). What was she thinking, you might ask? Click the link and find out. Five eye rolls. Highly unrecommended.

The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde). This was my first time reading Dorian Gray, and I went in knowing nothing other than what everyone knows, which is that Dorian Gray remains ever young while his portrait in the attic ages hideously. And rightly so, because as it turns out (SPOILER ALERT), Dorian Gray is an absolutely hideous person. I’d expected that he would be vain and selfish and trifling and dishonest, but he’s a straight-up murderous monster, lacking in all human decency. He’d be right at home in 2026. 

The Beauty of Everyday Things (Soetsu Yanagi). I’ve actually not yet finished this book. It’s on my coffee table, and I read it a page or two at a time. It’s a series of essays about ordinary household objects made by Japanese craftsmen and artisans. The essays and accompanying photographs are quite beautiful - inspiring, too - and I like his Yanagi’s idea that patterns and technique and their limitations are prerequisites for beauty, not hindrances. No one, not even a genius, is endlessly creative. Structure is helpful. But I hate his blithe dismissal of the craftspeople themselves. He insists that craftspeople are artisans NOT artists, and that anonymity is essential to their work. He disdains the idea that a craftsperson should try to put her personal stamp on anything she makes. He seems to believe in a permanent underclass who should quietly work their lives away creating beauty and comfort and ease for their betters. Another one who'd be right at home in 2026.

Demon Copperhead (Barbara Kingsolver)

David Copperfield. Charles Dickens.

Family and Other Calamities (Leslie Gray Streeter) and Trespasses (Louise Kennedy)

The Crow Trap (Ann Cleeves)

Mansfield Park (Jane Austen)

Iris in Winter (Elizabeth Caddell)

The Pursuit of Love, Love in a Cold Climate, and Don’t Tell Alfred (Nancy Mitford)

The Truths We Hold and 107 Days (Kamala Harris). I read the first book early in the year, amid the early Trump 2.0 chaos of DOGE and USAID and plane crashes, when people on the internet were seriously, with a straight face, asking why Kamala wasn’t “doing something about all of this.” Never mind that Kamala actually asked for the chance to lead, by running a near-flawless campaign for President. Never mind that she warned us - repeatedly and clearly and convincingly - that everything that happened last year and that is happening now would in fact happen. And never mind that 76 or so million Americans looked at the smart and compassionate and principled and accomplished Black lady and the 34-count pu$&y-grabbing corrupt racist insurrectionist felon and said “yeah, we’ll take the White dude.” Kamala was RIGHT THERE, ready to lead, and this country said “no thanks, we like the conman.” Yes, it’s been almost two years, and no, I am not over it. 

Lovely One, Ketanji Brown Jackson. I often wonder what it’s like for Justice Jackson to finally fulfill her highest ambition, only to be surrounded by the six worst Supreme Court justices in history. And Justices Kagan and Sotomayor, too - but at least they had a chance to serve when the Supreme Court wasn’t a wholly owned subsidiary of a corrupt Executive Branch. Anyway, it’s a very good book. I just finished Uncommon Favor, Dawn Staley’s memoir, and there’s a common thread connecting them. Both of these women knew what they wanted to do from a very early age. Both of them knew that they were extraordinarily gifted. Both of them were singularly dedicated to pursuing their goals. And of course, both of them had to be twice as good as white men to get half as far. 

Black Widow (Leslie Gray Streeter) and The End of the World is a Cul de Sac (Louise Kennedy)

The Sum of Us (Heather McGhee). I’m not sure why I didn’t write about this before, because it is very good. I have always been impressed with Heather McGhee when I’ve seen her on discussion panels, and I am consciously trying to read more books by Black authors, especially women. McGhee’s central thesis is in her subtitle: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. She touches on some of the same themes that Heather Cox Richardson wrote about in Democracy Awakening, which explains what Richardson calls the “liberal consensus,” the social welfare system that pulled us out of the Depression and made America free and prosperous in the post-war years; and its gradual dismantling beginning with Ronald Reagan and continuing through the first Trump administration. McGhee covers this as well, but with a much closer examination of the role of race in the dismantling of the social welfare system and the ways in which Reagan and others in the public and private spheres exploited racial fears to hoodwink the so-called “white working class” into believing that equality for Black Americans would equal poverty and deprivation for them. Sadly, their tactics worked and continue to work, to everyone’s detriment. We really could have a just society and a fair distribution of wealth, but only if we understand that racism is the major obstacle. 

Ten Days that Shook the World, John Reed. As I mentioned here, I re-read Ten Days after watching Reds for the first time right after Diane Keaton died. Fair warning - this post touches on pretty much everything, so don’t expect a book review. 

Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, Jason Stanley. God, I spent a lot of 2025 neck-deep in fascism, didn’t I? No wonder my brain is in the state it’s in. Anyway, this book touches on some of the same things that Heather McGhee and Heather Cox Richardson and Timothy Snyder and Anne Applebaum have covered in their recent books, with a bit of a narrower focus. Stanley examines a specific tactic of fascists - the rewriting of history, the flooding of the zone with bullshit, making it harder to tell truth from lies; and of course, the framing of oppressors as victims. It’s DARVO on a macro scale. Jason Stanley and Timothy Snyder are both in Canada now. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to characterize their departure as fleeing the US. I worry about HCR sometimes.  

I read a few other things here and there, too. I listened to an audiobook version of Jonathan Alter’s His Very Best, a biography of Jimmy Carter. I don’t consider that I really read it, not because I don’t think listening to an audiobook is reading (keep me out of that debate) but because I didn’t really pay attention to the recording. I ended up buying a copy of the book, an actual copy, because it was right on the front table of a new locally owned bookstore that I really like. The parts that actually penetrated the brain fog when I was listening were quite good so maybe I’ll actually read it this year. If I do, you'll see it on my 2026 book list. God willing, I will publish that sometime before the end of 2027.

Retribution

I read Jonathan Karl’s Retribution right after Christmas. This is a book whose cover is adorned with the infamous “Fight” photo taken right after the 2024 “assassination attempt” in Butler, PA and left to my own devices I wouldn’t have touched it with a barge pole. But it was a Christmas present, so I read it. 

It was fine, I guess - very critical of Trump though not nearly critical enough. Karl is also critical of Biden and Harris and although some of his criticism is reasonable, the book as a whole reads very much as though Mr. Karl is trying to come across as “balanced” and “fair,” things that used to be very important to serious journalists and I suppose still are. But there are not always “both sides.” As they say on the internet, if one person tells a journalist that it’s pouring outside and another tells the same journalist that it’s bright and sunny, then the journalist’s job is not to present both sides of the story - it’s to look out the fucking window and see who’s telling the truth. 

*****

It is interesting that Sean Curran, who was Special Agent in Charge of Trump’s security detail on July 13 2024 is now the head of the United States Secret Service. Kimberly Cheatle, who was the Director of the Secret Service on that day, was fired; but the SA who was actually responsible for the safety of then former President Trump was promoted. Jonathan Karl interviewed Director Curran about how the Secret Service would respond if Trump was convicted and sent to prison in 2024, and Curran assured Karl that the Secret Service would continue to protect the former President no matter where he was, and that Curran himself was prepared to remain imprisoned with Trump. “There’s nothing I would not have done for him,” Curran said. Nothing he would not have done. Interesting. 

*****

I am a chronically well-informed person who lived and breathed every minute of the 2024 election campaign. I remember most of the details, most of the day to day ins and outs of that campaign. I remember the excitement and optimism of October, when I thought Kamala Harris would win. I also read 107 Days, Harris’s book about the campaign, pretty much the minute it came out. So I was already pretty well-versed in the events of 2024, and I didn’t learn much reading this book that I didn’t already know. It’s well-researched and well-written, but it didn’t reveal anything, about Trump or the campaign, that I wasn’t already aware of. Until the end, though, I thought that it might be a fine book to read for anyone who wants a primer on the last presidential election. But Jonathan Karl’s closing arguments tanked the whole thing for me. 

*****

About journalist friends who feared that a second Trump term would be the end of democracy in the United States, Karl writes “I have long believed - and still hope - that those fears are overblown.” This is just stupid, so shockingly stupid, that it outweighs any of the book’s positives. 

This is a book that came out late in the year 2025, a year in which a Congresswoman was arrested for trying to fulfill her oversight responsibility at an ICE holding facility in her district. It was a year in which a sitting US Senator was grabbed and thrown to the floor for daring to ask the Secretary of Homeland Security a question. The first official act of this presidency was a pardon for hundreds of insurrectionists, including people who attacked police officers with flagpoles and bear spray. 2025 was the year in which National Guard troops were nationalized and deployed on city streets. On October 1, 2025, the nation’s top military officers were summoned to a browbeating by the Secretary of Defense with a guest appearance by the President who told the Generals and Admirals that they needed to be prepared to fight the enemy within; i.e., us. We shipped people to a torture prison in a foreign country. We built an actual concentration camp. And that’s just what I can remember right off the top of my head. If none of that was enough to convince a journalist that his colleagues’ fears for the country were not “overblown” then what is he even doing?   

*****

I don’t blame the media for everything. But I blame them for not doing their jobs, and it seems to me that a journalist publishing a whole ass book about the 2024 campaign and the early days of his second term and still downplaying the seriousness of what’s happening in this country is really not doing his damn job. I’m going to go read a real book now.