Vice President Kamala Harris is now in Hawaii enjoying a long vacation after her dramatic defeat by President-elect Donald Trump.
But political insiders who know her say she will already be thinking about a potential return to the campaign trail.
‘Of course she’s going to try and run again,’ one well-connected Democratic strategist told DailyMail.com, citing Harris’ ambition as a factor.
It means her devastating loss to Trump may not be the end of her political career.
Indeed, polls show Harris is the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.
She leads with 41 percent of Democrats in a Puck News/Echelon Insights survey, while other possible candidates remain in single digits.
However, the poll also showed that 59 percent of Democrats would like to look beyond Harris when searching for a champion to lead them out of the political wilderness.
US Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris eats Doritos and thanks senior staff aboard Air Force Two
Despite some hesitation, Harris has generated a lot of sympathetic reactions from professional Democrats in Washington.
They describe her campaign as ‘near flawless’ but say she struggled to separate herself from President Joe Biden’s record.
One strategist compared her to the backup quarterback called into win the football game after they were already down in the fourth quarter.
‘I think she did the best she could,’ he said.
In 2028, Harris will be only 63, young enough to make a political comeback, especially if Trump’s second term is a failure.
But strategists admit that Harris has to make some radical changes if she plans to be a future candidate for president.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris reacts as administration staff applaud her outside the White House in Washington.
The most glaring issue, they say, is her struggle to communicate.
‘Even when she’s talking forever, she’s not really saying much at all,’ one said.
One Democratic communicator said that her rapid rise from a district attorney to the Senate and Vice President of the United States was partially to blame for her struggles as a candidate.
‘This is someone who had a meteoric rise, her Achilles heel has been not having her own political identity, it created this blanket of caution that really f***d her up,’ he said.
For Harris to win again she would need to finally define herself outside of her own ambition and put to rest questions about what she really believed in.
Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki explained in a recent podcast interview with Katie Couric that politics had changed significantly from 2019 when Harris last ran a presidential primary.
Kamala Harris appears on The View
Any candidate for the future, she said, would have to do better with explaining their vision for the country.
‘You have to be fearless in how you communicate, and who and what formats you communicate on and that means all the things,’ she said.
Psaki dismissed the viral gimmicks the Harris campaign employed during the campaign, working to attract attention from celebrity influencers and viral TikTok trends.
‘Brat summer, which was cool, didn’t work. Young people didn’t turn out,’ she said.
One Democratic strategist agreed.
‘Kamala can run again and hopefully will improve as a messenger but I think the concerns about her ability to convey a coherent message still remain,’ he said.
More damaging than ever to her campaign was her leftist positions she took during her 2019 campaign, such as banning plastic straws.
US President Joe Biden, left, and Vice President Kamala Harris on the Truman Balcony of the White House in Washington, DC
In 2028, Harris would need to explain why she took those previous positions on issues and explain to voters why she changed her mind.
‘Her 2019 rhetoric came back to haunt her and she didn’t have a good explanation why any of those positions had changed,’ one consultant said.
Harris failed to differentiate herself from Biden and his record weighed her down as she tried to run on a message of a ‘new way forward.’
If Harris ran again, four years of separation could help her do that effectively, but she would have to explain what had changed and why, strategists said.
She would need a radical break from her cautious media approach to shake perceptions loose and reveal the ‘real’ Kamala Harris, they said.
An appearance on a long-form podcast, such as Joe Rogan could be good for her brand, especially if she dropped her calculated and scripted responses to questions, and was authentic.
Many on the left, however, are skeptical whether the vice president even has the political abilities needed to run again for office.
Some celebrated the end of the monumental effort by the Democratic Party to make Harris the next charismatic leader of their party, after five years of trying.
‘It’s almost impossible to imagine a candidate losing as horribly as Kamala re-entering politics on a national level,’ journalist Glenn Greenwald told DailyMail.com.
Greenwald argued that the only presidential candidate who lost so badly and made a political comeback was President Richard Nixon after his close loss to John F. Kennedy.
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, center, sits in conversation with Black men at Philly Cuts barbershop, Oct. 27, 2024, in Philadelphia
He estimated that Harris would likely ‘cash in’ on her political achievements, with a book deal and high paid speeches to corporate clients, or become a ‘symbolic partner in a big law firm.’
Harris, he said, had no political future on a national platform, as she proved that she lacked critical political strengths.
‘For years until she was imposed as the Dem nominee, and now after the election, everyone recognized, and recognizes now, that she has little to no political talent,’ he said, adding that ‘nobody believed she was a good candidate.’
California Democrats also speculate that Harris could possibly run for governor, now that current Gov. Gavin Newsom is term-limited.
A poll of California registered voters taken before the presidential election showed that 46 percent said they would be likely to support her for governor, according to the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies survey co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.
It’s unclear, however, whether Harris would even be interested in running for governor, as it could be perceived as a step back from her role as vice president.
‘Her only chance to re-enter politics would be as a state-elected official from California and I doubt she wants that given that she thought she’d be President,’ Greenwald said.
