Questions are swirling over Vice President Harris’s next move as she readies to exit the White House in the wake of her loss to President-elect Trump.
Early polling suggests Democrats want to see Harris back in the running for the Oval Office in 2028, despite her defeat this cycle. But some in the party speculate the vice president could seek another office — for starters, the governor’s mansion in California — or pursue avenues outside electoral politics to help bolster the resistance against a second Trump term.
“She still has a long career ahead of her,” said Democratic strategist Kate Maeder. “She’s young for politics in this country, and I think that folks are really excited to see what she does next, because she’s built such a powerful following around her, and I think that that will carry through after the election.”
Election Day was a bruising night for Democrats. Trump swept all of the swing states and made inroads in blue strongholds as most of the country shifted rightward, and the GOP secured both chambers of Congress to pave the way for a trifecta of power in Washington next year.
But in her speech conceding the 2024 race to her Republican rival, Harris stressed she will never give up on “the fight that fueled” her fast-tracked bid.
The outgoing vice president, 60, “still has a fight in her,” Maeder said. “Whether it’s around public policy or it’s fighting the good fight in the private sector, I think it’s left to be seen.”
Harris is among a small handful of vice presidents in recent history who tried for the presidency and lost, and each took different paths in the aftermath, noted Joel Goldstein, a professor emeritus at Saint Louis University’s law school and an expert on the vice presidency. Richard Nixon mounted an unsuccessful bid for California governor before his comeback White House win in 1968, and Hubert Humphrey returned to the Senate. Al Gore never ran for political office again, focusing on environmental activism and earning the Nobel Peace Prize.
“So there’s a lot of different options available to her,” Goldstein said. “I would think that if she wants to remain active in presidential politics, that that’s certainly something that’s open to her … if that’s the course she wanted.”
“If she decided she wanted to run for president in 2028, she would start out as a favorite,” said Jim Kessler, a co-founder of the left-center think tank Third Way. “I don’t think a prohibitive favorite, but definitely someone who would start out on top, would be able to raise money, is known by voters, and who acquitted herself very well in her short campaign against Trump.”
But early lists of possible 2028 contenders are already crowded with Democratic rising stars, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. A stacked field might make it difficult for Harris to reseize the momentum she saw this year.
“I think she would struggle to win a primary in 2028 and that’s just too long to go between now and then … when you have so many of the people sitting out there who are going to run, likely to run,” said Democratic strategist Fred Hicks.
Instead, there might be another opening for Harris in her home state of California, which is already seen as a bastion of blue-state resistance to the incoming Trump term.
Newsom is term limited and ineligible to seek reelection when his seat is up in 2026, leaving the governor’s mansion up for grabs.
A poll from the University of California, Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and the Los Angeles Times this month found nearly half of California voters would be likely to support her if she were to enter the 2026 gubernatorial race.
Doing so could put her in “a prime position to fight against Trumpism for the latter part of his term,” Hicks said. Newsom’s office has said California officials are ready to “Trump-proof” state laws, and the state attorney general is similarly on alert to resist controversial Trump policies. But both the governorship and the attorney general seat will be on the ballot in 2026.
As she campaigned for the White House this year, Harris touted her experience as a prosecutor in California. She served as San Fransisco district attorney and then state attorney general, making history as the first woman, first African American and first Asian American in both offices. She ascended in 2017 to the U.S. Senate, where she represented the progressive stronghold until she joined the Biden administration.
Running for a four-year term as governor would likely take Harris out of 2028 contention, but it wouldn’t necessarily mean she’d never try for the Oval Office again, Hicks said, pointing to 2032 and stressing Harris’s young age relative to Trump and President Biden, both more than 20 years her senior.
But regardless of which path Harris picks, “she can and should become the face of the Democratic resistance,” Hicks contended.
Attorney and Democratic strategist Abou Amara said the California gubernatorial race, another presidential run or even a step into the advocacy world all look like they’re on the table for Harris, but “Goal No. 1” is to “really preserve flexibility as she moves forward.”
“Another part of this question is: What does she want her capstone to be on her political career?” Amara said.
And as the dust settles on 2024, experts also expect Harris may wade into the Democratic Party’s soul-searching efforts and tell her own story of what happened in the race. After her 2016 loss to Trump, for example, Clinton chronicled her bid in a memoir aptly titled “What Happened.”
“I think that will absolutely be part of the next eight to 12 months, to decompress what happened,” Amara said. “I expect her, whether it be through speeches or writing a book, to really lay out her understanding of what happened. Because Democrats are going to squabble back and forth with different theories … but I think it would be important to hear directly from her.”
Experts and Democratic operatives alike stressed that, just a few weeks past Election Day and two months before the White House changes hands, it’s early to peer into the crystal ball for Harris’s future. Still, the consensus prediction is that the outgoing vice president will stay in the game and remain a change-maker figure for the party as it rebuilds after 2024.
“I do think that she deserves some well-earned time to rest and think about her next steps,” Maeder said. “I think that she proved to the Democratic Party and to the nation that she has something to offer when it comes to leadership and the next generation of leadership that the Democratic Party is so hungry for. And so what she does next, I think that’s left to be seen.”
White House insists Biden, Harris have ‘one of most successful administrations in history’ despite 2024 loss
White House says Biden-Harris leaving office with ‘best economy in the world’
Just weeks after Vice President Kamala Harris’ overwhelming loss to President-elect Trump in the 2024 presidential election, the White House released a memo that hailed the Biden-Harris administration as one of the most successful in history.
The memo shared on Monday highlighted how President Biden and Harris took office during the COVID-19 pandemic and a “reeling” economy, before going on to call their administration “one of the most successful administrations in history” which “will be leaving behind the best economy in the world.”
“Under President Biden and Vice President Harris’ leadership, 16 million jobs have been created, and we’ve gotten women and people of color back in the labor force at record rates,” the memo stated. “A record 20 million new business applications have been filed, and inflation is down to near pre-pandemic levels.”
The White House added that “our success” in these areas was due to “passing and implementing legislation that rebuilt our nation’s infrastructure, made the largest investment in climate action in history, lowered prescription drug costs, and spurred a manufacturing renaissance.”
The memo quotes unnamed “business leaders” calling the U.S. economy “among the best performing economies” in decades.
The latest jobs report released earlier this month, however, appears to show a different story.
The Labor Department report shows that just 12,000 jobs were created in October, far below estimates of up to 120,000 and were the lowest in four years. The unemployment rate was 4.1%, in line with expectations.
President Biden bowed out of the 2024 presidential race in July following a dismal debate performance against former President Trump. Vice President Kamala Harris then led the Democratic ticket, ultimately losing to Trump. (Andrew Leyden/NurPhoto via Getty Images, File)
The cumulative effect of inflation has continued to weigh on many Americans.
The Labor Department’s inflation report for October found that the consumer price index — a broad measure of how much everyday goods like gasoline, groceries and rent cost — was up 2.6% from a year ago for the U.S. as a whole, in line with expectations as inflation ticked higher amid a broader cooling trend.
Days ahead of the presidential election, Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt argued that “this jobs report is a catastrophe and definitively reveals how badly Kamala Harris broke our economy.”
President-elect Trump overwhelmingly defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, winning both the Electoral College and popular vote. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, File)
On Election Day, the will of the American people was reflected in the vote totals and appeared to show a referendum on the policies of the Biden-Harris administration.
Trump beat Harris with a resounding 312 electoral votes to Harris’ 226, and with over 2 million more votes in the popular vote.
California governor? Another White House run? Kamala Harris unsure of next steps after losing election: report
Vice President Kamala Harris is searching for the next steps in her political career after losing the election, some former aides told Politico.
“She is not someone who makes rash decisions. She takes, sometimes, a painfully long time to make decisions. So I would pretty much guarantee you she has no idea what her next move is,” former Harris aide Brian Brokaw told Politico.
Harris has maintained a low profile after losing to President-elect Donald Trump. She arrived in Kalaoa, Hawaii, on Tuesday for a vacation from her campaign schedule and duties as vice president.
Everything from running for governor in her home state of California to another presidential run could be on the table. Current California Gov. Gavin Newsom cannot seek another term in 2026 and reportedly has White House aspirations of his own.
“Could she run for governor? Yes. Do I think she wants to run for governor? Probably not. Could she win? Definitely. Would she like the job? I don’t know. Could she run for president again? Yes,” Brokaw told Politico.
“Would she have a whole bunch of skepticism from the outset, because she has run in a full-length Democratic primary where [in 2019] she didn’t even make it long enough to be in the Iowa caucus, and then she was the nominee this year?”
Some former aides say that Harris has limited time and political capital to decide whether she wants to run for office.
“She doesn’t have to decide if she wants to run for something again in the next six months,” one former Harris campaign aide told Politico. “The natural thing to do would be to set up some type of entity that would give her the opportunity to travel and give speeches and preserve her political relationships.”
Another person in Harris’ orbit emphasized that time is running short for Harris to make a decision.
“There will be a desire to hear her voice, and there won’t be a vacuum for long,” a person close to Harris reportedly said.
The timing of the vice president’s trip to Hawaii following her loss has generated questions, especially amid reports that the Harris campaign spent $1.5 billion in 15 weeks. (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The timing of the vice president’s trip to Hawaii following her loss has generated questions, especially since some Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffers have been surprised by sudden layoffs amid reports that the Harris campaign spent $1.5 billion in 15 weeks on a losing effort.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended the Harris vacation during a Thursday briefing, arguing there was nothing “wrong” with the vice president taking a vacation.
“The vice president has taken time off to go spend time with her family. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I think she deserves some time to be with her family and to have some downtime. She has worked very hard over – for the last four years, and her taking a couple of days to be with her family, good for her. Good for her,” Jean-Pierre said.
Fox News’ Michael Lee contributed to this report.
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