There’s no law that says a politician has to write a book after a big election. Kamala Harris, the former vice president, was not required to write a book about her losing 2024 presidential campaign. But she wrote one anyway, and now a lot of people, those favorable to Harris and those not, are wondering why she did.

They’re wondering because Harris, who might or might not be considering another run for president in 2028, seems determined to irritate some of the people whose help she might need in the years ahead. What’s worse, she does it in a remarkably petty way.

The book, “107 Days,” is not filled with attacks. It is filled with slights.

In one chapter, Harris goes through the notes she made of the reactions that some top Democrats had when then-President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and almost instantly endorsed Harris. For example, both Bill and Hillary quickly told Harris they supported her and would do anything she asked to help. James Clyburn, the South Carolina congressman and powerbroker, said simply, “Let’s go. I’m all in.”

But Harris says Gavin Newsom, the governor of Harris’ home state of California, responded with: “Hiking. Will call back.” (Harris follows that with a quick parenthetical: “He never did.”) In fact, Newsom endorsed Harris that very day, a few hours later, in what the Los Angeles Times called a “show of California unity.” Why nitpick about that at this late date, especially given Newsom’s rising status in the Democratic Party?

Harris also notified Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, who Harris says responded with, “I believe you’ll win, but I need to let the dust settle, talk to my colleagues before I make a public statement.” There was certainly nothing wrong with that, and indeed Whitmer endorsed Harris the next day, but why publish her confidential communications with the suggestion of insufficient enthusiasm for her party’s ticket?

Then there is Harris’ treatment of the Democratic governor of the most important swing state in the country, Pennsylvania. Harris does not really criticize Josh Shapiro. But she says just enough mildly negative things about him to make clear he could never make the cut to serve as her vice presidential running mate.

Harris describes at some length the process she went through to interview Shapiro. Besides the two principals, a key player in the story was Storm Horncastle, a former Netflix executive Harris called her “indispensable social secretary” and manager of the vice presidential residence. Eager to keep Harris’ decision-making process a secret, Horncastle arranged to pick Shapiro up in a school parking lot. Harris suggests that Shapiro did not want things to be kept a secret, that he wanted to be seen being driven into the vice president’s compound. When Horncastle told Shapiro he had to sit in the back seat and duck, “she thought he seemed a little disappointed by that,” Harris writes.

Once in the house, there was a measuring-the-drapes moment when Shapiro “peppered [Horncastle] with questions about the house, from the number of bedrooms to how he might arrange to get Pennsylvania artists’ work on loan from the Smithsonian,” Harris writes.

After the meeting, still trying to keep the talks secret, Horncastle took Shapiro back to the original pickup spot and instructed his state trooper to take the governor on a route that did not pass in front of the vice president’s residence, so reporters would not see Pennsylvania state vehicles driving past. “[Horncastle] was disappointed, ten minutes later, to see those very cars on CNN, cruising right by the residence,” Harris writes. “That lack of discretion did not play well with her.” Which leads the reader to a question: Who is picking a vice president, Kamala Harris or Storm Horncastle?

Finally, when Harris passed over Shapiro and chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, she tried to quickly call Shapiro with the news before he could learn it in the press. “[Former Biden White House counsel] Dana Remus later let me know that Josh had been trying to reach me earlier that morning,” Harris writes. “The only reason I could imagine for him calling was that he’d intuited he wouldn’t be the choice and wanted to withdraw first, so it would be seen as his decision.”

So what’s with all that? Let’s take it as a fact that Harris just doesn’t like Shapiro. Fine. What does she think will be accomplished by the quibbling and fault-finding?

In the bigger picture, if Harris does indeed harbor hope of being the Democratic nominee in 2028, she can probably forget it, but not for any of the reasons explored in “107 Days.” The simple fact is, the party does not like to re-nominate past nominees who lost, and that seems unlikely to change now. And that is the key fact of 2024 for Kamala Harris: She had her chance, and she lost.

This content originally appeared on the Washington Examiner at washingtonexaminer.com/daily-memo/3821112/in-harris-book-why-the-petty-slurs-and-slights/.