On Tuesday, former Vice President Kamala Harris spoke by phone with former President Joe Biden to warn him about the forthcoming excerpt from her new memoir, according to two people familiar with the call.

That didn’t prevent former Biden aides from going on the attack a day later in the first public breach between the party’s last two standard bearers, one that threatens their relationship and could deepen divisions within the party.

“No one wants to hear your pity party,” said one former Biden White House official, who, like nearly all of the dozen former Biden and Harris aides and Democratic operatives interviewed, was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the person who led their party just a year ago.

In her book excerpt, Harris stated for the first time in detail that she, too, had recognized Biden’s growing frailty, saying the 81-year-old “got tired” — the storyline Biden’s White House spent four years denying — and called it “reckless” that no one intervened earlier to forestall a reelection campaign.

“The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition,” Harris wrote in her book excerpt in the Atlantic. “It should have been more than a personal decision.”

Some former colleagues, suspicious of Harris’ intent to run again, see the publication of what Democrats whispered about but vehemently denied in 2024 as primarily a political project.

But her newfound candor represents a stunning severance of a political partnership that weathered years of potential splits from an early confrontation around race to the November loss of the White House to a second Donald Trump presidency. Her sharp words have reverberations beyond the Harris-Biden years, as a number of their former colleagues said they felt conflicted about the forthcoming book. While they recognize much of her account is true, they still wish it wasn’t coming at a time when Democrats are struggling to move on and to effectively counter an administration intent on challenging norms and testing the limits of the law.

Many feel this could and should have been dealt with long ago.

“I hate that we’re beating up on a man struggling with cancer, and [who] did genuinely serve our country pretty damn well, even if he made a critical error at the end,” one former Biden and Harris campaign aide said. “But maybe what is even more painful is we needed more of this distinction and acknowledgement during the campaign. … I’m most offended by this being too little, too late.”

Another former Biden aide asked, “why didn’t she do this during the campaign,” when her “main imperative would’ve been to distance herself because there was an election going on.”

Kelly Scully, a spokesperson for Biden, declined to comment.

A person familiar with Harris’ thinking suggested that the Biden-focused excerpt was not reflective of the memoir more broadly. “She set out to be candid in this book, whether that’s her genuine struggles with how to balance her loyal relationship with President Biden with tough political realities, or reflecting on her own missteps on the campaign trail which I know she also writes about,” the person said. “She is being honest about her own experience.”

No additional details were available about Harris’ Tuesday phone call with Biden. And few close to the two wanted to comment on the state of their relationship. In the excerpt, she dismissed “a narrative of some big conspiracy” to hide Biden’s frailty and asserted that, despite his age, he was “able to discharge the duties of president.”

The conversation, nearly a year after Harris’ loss and with the party’s brand hitting new lows in public polling, has reopened Democratic wounds that several operatives and strategists said will reverberate through the 2028 primary campaign.

“One of the pretty critical questions Democrats have to answer in 2028 is, should Joe Biden have run? Democrats need a crisp answer on it,” said a former Biden staffer and Democratic strategist. “That’s going to be one of the big litmus tests.”

For now, the party is still sorting through its wreckage. A new Democratic standard bearer has yet to emerge. And with the Sept. 23 publication of Harris’ memoir, “107 Days,” and accompanying nationwide book tour — and the eventual publication of Biden’s own memoir — the party’s last two presidential nominees continue to cast long, backward-looking shadows.

In many ways, that was to be expected. After 2016, when Democrats landed in the post-Trump wilderness for the first time, the party litigated that primary for years, arguing whether the Hillary Clinton-Bernie Sanders divisions resulted in their general election loss.

But the recriminations this time — over who to blame and what went wrong — is even more intense. It also appears never-ending, Democratic operatives said, because in 2024, the party never held a serious primary where they could’ve answered some of those questions with voters.

Several potential 2028 candidates appear to recognize the relevance of the topic to Democratic voters and many have already weighed in — with varying degrees of intensity. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in May that it was “maybe” a mistake. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said there was “no doubt” Biden suffered cognitive decline while he served in office. Rep. Ro Khanna of California said Democrats “made a mistake” in supporting Biden’s reelection, adding that it’s “obvious now to me” that he “was not in a condition to run.”

The party’s collective failure to deal with the matter at the time, of course, has left them stuck on Biden questions at a moment when Trump is testing the limits of the law by deploying the military to police American cities, unilaterally imposing tariffs and pressuring Republican legislators to gerrymander congressional districts in several states.

“While the former vice president sets her own narrative, I wish more leaders with a platform would channel their energy into electing Democrats and fighting for more affordable food and housing,” said Meghan Hays, the former director of strategic planning in the Biden White House. “Now more than ever, we need every megaphone pushing back against Donald Trump’s disastrous agenda.”

Andrew Bates, who served as deputy press secretary for all four years of Biden’s term, also made clear in a statement that Democrats would be better served focusing on more current matters. “Democrats just won their 42nd out of 43 elections since November because we’re making an effective case against Trump’s cost-raising agenda and chaos,” Bates said.

Beyond the questions surrounding Biden’s decision to seek a second term, Harris’ complained that her team often had to fight for her inclusion in the president’s events and that it was often “impossible” to get the White House press shop to defend her publicly. Those claims drew a mixed reaction from former Biden White House officials and Democratic operatives.

“Her criticisms weren’t on the substance, like the way [the Biden administration] handled the economy or the border, on the things that clearly turned off the American public. But it was on them not doing enough to promote her and have her back in the press,” said a national Democratic strategist. “It speaks to why she lost.”

Another national Democrat who is close to Harris’ orbit also expressed surprise at the excerpt, describing it as a “coming off as a grievance narrative.”

“If you’re trying to be seen as a stateswoman, this [excerpt] misses the mark,” the person added.

Some pointed to news articles in which the White House was on the record defending Harris. But others suggested she had a legitimate gripe about her news coverage being left out of the clip roundups prepared for the president and being left out of press briefings. They pointed to former chief of staff Ron Klain’s acknowledgement in an interview last year that the Biden operation that he led was partly responsible for the rough press coverage of Harris early on. “I don’t think we did a good enough job of selling her,” Klain told the New York Times.

“They were shitty to her over in the West Wing” another former Biden official said.