Precisely two months after her election loss to Donald Trump, Vice-President Kamala Harris will preside over the certification of her personal defeat.
As president of the Senate, on Monday she is going to stand on the Home Speaker’s rostrum to steer the counting of Electoral Faculty votes, formally cementing her rival’s triumph two weeks earlier than he returns to the White Home.
The circumstances are painful and awkward for a candidate who decried her opponent as an pressing risk to American democracy, however Harris aides insist she is going to conduct her constitutional and authorized obligation with seriousness and beauty.
It isn’t the primary time a shedding candidate will lead the joint session of Congress to depend their opponent’s presidential electors – Al Gore endured the indignity in 2001 and Richard Nixon in 1961.
Nevertheless it’s a becoming coda to an unbelievable election that noticed Harris elevated from a back-up to the nation’s oldest president to the Democratic customary bearer – whose fleeting marketing campaign offered a jolt of hope to her celebration earlier than a crushing loss uncovered deep inner faultlines.
Harris and her staff are actually deliberating her second act, and weighing whether or not it consists of one other run for the White Home in 2028 or pursuing a bid for the governor’s mansion in her dwelling state of California.
Whereas latest Democratic candidates who misplaced elections – Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton – have determined in opposition to searching for the presidency once more, aides, allies and donors argue that the groundswell of help Harris captured in her unsuccessful bid and the bizarre circumstances of her condensed marketing campaign proves there’s nonetheless scope for her to hunt the Oval Workplace.
They even level to Donald Trump’s personal circuitous political path – the previous and future president’s bookend wins in 2016 and 2024, regardless of shedding because the incumbent in 2020.
However whereas many Democrats don’t blame Harris for Trump’s win, some – stung by a bruising loss that has referred to as the celebration’s technique into query – are deeply sceptical of giving her one other shot on the White Home. A number of Democratic governors who coalesced behind the vice-president in 2024 however have ambitions of their very own are seen by some strategists as brisker candidates with a a lot better likelihood of successful.
Harris herself is claimed to be in no rush to make any choices, telling advisers and supporters she is open to all the probabilities that await her after Inauguration Day on 20 January.
She is assessing the previous couple of months, which noticed her launch a wholly new White Home marketing campaign, vet a running-mate, lead a celebration conference and barnstorm the nation in simply 107 days. And aides level out that she stays the US vice-president, not less than for an additional two weeks.
“She has a choice to make and you’ll’t make it once you’re nonetheless on the treadmill. It could have slowed down – however she’s on the treadmill till 20 January,” mentioned Donna Brazile, an in depth Harris ally who suggested the marketing campaign.
“You possibly can’t put anybody in a field. We did not put Al Gore in a field and it was apparent the nation was very divided after the 2000 election,” mentioned Brazile, who ran Gore’s marketing campaign in opposition to George W Bush and pointed to his second life as an environmental activist. “All choices are on the desk as a result of there’s an urge for food for change and I do consider that she will symbolize that change sooner or later.”
However the nagging query that shadows any potential 2028 run is whether or not the 60-year-old can separate herself from Joe Biden – one thing she did not do within the election marketing campaign.
Her allies within the celebration say that Biden’s selection to hunt re-election regardless of worries about his age, solely then to in the end drop out of the race with months to go, doomed her candidacy.
Although Trump swept all seven battleground states and is the primary Republican in 20 years to win the favored vote, his margin of victory was comparatively slim whereas Harris nonetheless received 75 million votes, an consequence her supporters argue cannot be ignored as a at present faceless Democratic celebration rebuilds over the following 4 years.
On the opposite facet, these near Biden stay satisfied he may have defeated Trump once more, regardless of surveys exhibiting he had been bleeding help from key Democratic voting blocs.
They level out that Harris fell quick the place the president did not in 2020, underperforming with core Democratic teams like black and Latino voters. Critics proceed to convey up her 2019 marketing campaign to turn out to be the Democratic presidential nominee, which sputtered out in lower than a yr.
“Individuals neglect that had there been an actual main [in 2024], she by no means would have been the nominee. Everybody is aware of that,” mentioned one former Biden adviser.
The adviser, who spoke on situation of anonymity to debate a delicate matter, applauded Harris for reviving the Democratic base and serving to key congressional races, however mentioned Trump’s marketing campaign efficiently undercut her on essential marketing campaign points together with the economic system and the border.
Members of Trump’s staff, nonetheless, together with his chief pollster, have acknowledged that Harris carried out stronger as a candidate than Biden on sure points just like the economic system amongst voters.
But there is not any escaping that any Democratic main contest for 2028 could be a troublesome combat, with rising stars like Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and California Governor Gavin Newsom already weighing presidential runs.
Some Democrats say that Harris would nonetheless begin forward of the pack, with nationwide identify recognition, a much-coveted mailing listing and a deep bench of volunteers.
“What state celebration wouldn’t need her to return assist them set the desk for the 2026 midterm elections?” Brazile mentioned. “She’s going to have loads alternatives not solely to rebuild, however to strengthen the coalition that got here collectively to help her in 2024.”
Others have prompt she may step out of the political enviornment totally, operating a basis or establishing an institute of politics at her alma mater, Howard College, the Washington-based traditionally black school the place she held her election evening celebration.
The previous high state prosecutor may be a contender for secretary of state or legal professional normal in a future Democratic administration. And he or she’ll have to resolve if she desires to write down one other e-book.
For all of her choices, Harris has advised aides, she desires to stay seen and be seen as a frontrunner within the celebration. One adviser prompt that she may exist exterior the home political fray, taking up a extra world function on a problem that issues to her, however that is a troublesome perch with out a platform as giant because the vice-presidency.
Within the waning days of the Biden-Harris administration, she plans to embark on a global journey to a number of areas, in line with a supply accustomed to the plans, signalling her need to keep up a task on the world stage and construct a legacy past being Biden’s quantity two.
For Harris and her staff, the weeks because the election have been humbling, a mixture of grief and resolve. A number of aides described the three-month dash that started when Biden dropped out as having begun with the marketing campaign “digging out of a gap” and ending with their candidate extra widespread than when she started, even when she did not win.
“There is a sense of peace understanding that given the hand we had been dealt, we ran by means of the tape,” mentioned one senior aide.
Following the election, Harris and her husband, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, spent per week in Hawaii with a small group of aides to loosen up and talk about her future.
Throughout a employees vacation celebration at her official residence earlier than Christmas, Harris recounted election evening and the way she delivered a pep discuss to her household because the outcomes grew to become clear.
“We aren’t having a pity celebration!” she advised the group of her response that evening.
Advisers and allies say she continues to be processing what occurred, and desires to attend and see how the brand new administration unfolds in January earlier than staking out any place, not to mention searching for to turn out to be the face of any so-called Trump “resistance”.
Democrats have discovered the resistance motion that took off amongst liberals within the wake of his 2016 win not resonates in at the moment’s political local weather, the place the Republican has confirmed that his message and elegance appeals to an enormous cross-section of Individuals.
They’ve adopted a extra conciliatory method in confronting the incoming president’s agenda. As a number of Democrats put it: “What resistance?”
Although she’s stored a comparatively low profile since her loss, Harris offered a glimpse of her mindset at an occasion for college students at Prince George’s Group Faculty in Maryland in December.
“The actions for civil rights, ladies’s rights, employees’ rights, america of America itself, would by no means have come to be if folks had given up their trigger after a court docket case, or a battle, or an election didn’t go their method,” she mentioned.
“We should keep within the combat,” she added, a chorus she has repeated since her 2016 Senate win. “Everybody of us.”
What meaning is much less clear. For some donors and supporters, staying “within the combat” may translate to a run for California governor in 2026, when a term-limited Gavin Newsom will step down and doubtlessly pursue his personal White Home ambitions. The job, main the world’s fifth-largest economic system, would additionally put Harris in direct battle with Trump, who has usually assailed the state for its left-leaning insurance policies.
However governing a serious state is not any small feat, and would derail any presidential run, as she could be sworn into workplace about the identical time she would want to launch a nationwide marketing campaign.
Those that have spoken to Harris mentioned she stays undecided concerning the governor’s race, which some allies have described as a possible “capstone” to her profession.
She has received statewide workplace 3 times as California’s legal professional normal and later as a US senator. However a gubernatorial win would give her one other historic honour – changing into the nation’s first black feminine governor.
Nonetheless, some allies acknowledge it could be troublesome to transition from being inside a 20-car motorcade and having a seat throughout the desk from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the governor’s mansion.
The non-public sector is an alternative choice.
“For ladies at different ranges of workplace, after they lose an election, typically choices aren’t as obtainable to them in comparison with males, who get a gentle touchdown at a regulation agency or insurance coverage enterprise, and it offers them a spot to take a beat, make some cash after which make choices about what’s subsequent,” mentioned Debbie Walsh, director for the Heart for American Girls and Politics at Rutgers College.
“I do not assume that is going to be an issue for Kamala Harris. I believe doorways will open for her if she desires to open them.”
However for Harris, who has been in elected workplace for 20 years, and labored as a public prosecutor earlier than that, an afterlife as governor would be the most becoming possibility.
“While you’ve had one shopper – the folks – for everything of your profession,” mentioned one former adviser, “the place do you go from right here?”
