SAN FRANCISCO — When former Vice President Kamala Harris strode onto The Masonic stage Sunday to discuss her presidential campaign memoir “107 Days,” it could have been a campaign rally all over again.

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The sold-out crowd of more than 3,000 people stood in applause and cheered so loudly, they drowned out Harris’s hello to the city where her political career began two decades ago as San Francisco District Attorney.

“It’s good to be home!” she said.

During the 90-minute conversation moderated by comedian and actor D.L. Hughley, the former state Attorney General and U.S. Senator shared the pain she felt on losing last year’s presidential race to Donald Trump, the changes she would make to her campaign, and the optimism she still has for America.

“No one can defeat your spirit if you don’t let them,” she said.

Kamala Harris talks with comedian and moderator D.L. Hughley during “A conversation with Kamala Harris” at The Masonic in San Francisco, Calif., on Sunday, Oct. 5, 2025. Harris was promoting her book “107 Days” about her unsuccessful 2024 presidential bid. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group) 

Many of those who attended the event — some from as far as San Diego and Sacramento — praised her message of hope as just what they needed after nine months of the Trump administration, which has ramped up deportations of non-citizens who are in the country without permission and is making plans to send more National Guard troops to Democratic-led cities where protesters have clashed with immigration agents.

“I’m amazed that she’s still positive after everything that she went through and what’s happening to our country,” said Amy Burkhart, a physician from Napa. “I think it was important for us to hear a message like that — that we still don’t give up and that we need to work together because there’s more of us than there are of them.”

Harris’s book about her 107-day campaign that began in July when President Biden dropped out of his re-election race sold 350,000 copies in its first week, one of the best starts for a memoir since 2023, behind the books by Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, Prince Harry, according to publisher Simon & Schuster. San Francisco was her fifth stop on her 18-city book tour that includes jaunts to London and Toronto, Canada.

Her book has been criticized for blaming others at times for her loss and for “burning bridges” of political allies. Harris gave no hint about whether she would pursue another presidential run. She already announced she would not run for California governor in 2026 to replace a termed-out Gavin Newsom.

“No one knows what the future holds,” Hughley said.

“This is my freedom tour,” she said with a laugh.

Kamala Harris speaks during “A conversation with Kamala Harris” at The Masonic in San Francisco, Calif., on Sunday, Oct. 5, 2025. Harris was promoting her book “107 Days” about her unsuccessful 2024 presidential bid. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group) 

At the same time, she lamented the paucity of protests against Trump’s administration, the “capitulation” of law firms, universities and corporations to “bend a knee at the foot of a tyrant,” and the political misinformation allowed by Silicon Valley’s social media companies.

“There are a lot of people here who work in the valley, who work on social media,” she said. “We’ve got to figure out how we, within the industry and the discipline of technology, require as part of this ethos and moral obligation, ethical obligation, monitor truth versus bull–.”

Harris lost to Trump by a slim 1.5% of the national vote, despite Trump winning all the battleground states. In more detail than in the book, Harris described the pain she felt on election night. She kept saying to herself, “My God, my God, my God,” she said.

“I was grieving, and I was grieving for a long time, and I have not felt a similar kind of grief since my mother died,” Harris said. “It was so painful, and it wasn’t about a win, it was about what I predicted was going to happen.”

She criticized Trump’s “weaponization” of the Justice Department to prosecute political enemies and for “lying” to voters that he would bring grocery prices down.

At the same time, however, she acknowledged that she should have focused more of her campaign on pocketbook issues instead of green technology and infrastructure.

“We’re going to have to realize that the majority of people in our country are … having a difficult time buying groceries, having a difficult time paying rent, and part of what we’ve got to do is deal with the immediate,” she said. “So if I had done it differently, I would have probably waited to do infrastructure and the Chips Act and done what we were working on, which is affordable child care, paid family leave and extended child tax credits.”

Throughout the on-stage discussion, Hughley often came across as cynical about America after Trump’s win — “as a Black man living in this country for a long time,” he suggested he’s not surprised by the racism people seem free to express now.

“I’m not really shocked about America being what it is now, because I think it was always there,” he said.

Harris pushed back, however, saying that the election was not “a full statement about who we are as Americans,” and pointed out that one-third of registered voters voted for Trump, one-third voted for Harris and one-third didn’t vote.

“I think there’s deep work to be done, including with the Democratic Party,” she said. For starters, she said, Democrats must get over “the ‘savior complex,” that focuses on finding one leader to save the party.

Instead, the party needs to support the newcomers who show promise to lead.

Illyasha Peete, 53, from Discovery Bay said Harris’s November loss was devastating, but Harris’s talk Sunday “reinvigorated me to jump back in to the fight. My parents were civil rights activists with Martin Luther King and they taught us that our job is to kick down doors and hold them open for others, and maybe even push others in front of you. She reintroduced me to that belief.”