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.”