Former Vice President Kamala Harris writes in her forthcoming book that it was reckless to leave Joe Biden’s decision to run for reelection up to the then-president’s personal choice, arguing that she and others around the president should have exerted more influence on him to step aside earlier.

“’It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized,” Harris wrote in an excerpt from her book published by The Atlantic Wednesday morning. “Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness. 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. It should have been more than a personal decision.”

But Harris argued as Biden’s potential successor, she was in the worst possible position to advise him on dropping out. Challenging the then-president’s call, she wrote, would have come off as “incredibly self-serving.”

“He would see it as naked ambition, perhaps as poisonous disloyalty, even if my only message was: Don’t let the other guy win,” she said.