Vice President Kamala Harris is now in Hawaii enjoying a long vacation after her dramatic loss to President-elect Donald Trump.
But political experts who know her say that she will already be thinking about a possible return to the electoral campaign.
“Of course she’ll try to run again,” one well-connected Democratic strategist told DailyMail.com, citing Harris’ ambition as a factor.
It means his devastating loss to Trump may not be the end of his political career.
In fact, polls show Harris is the favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.
She leads with 41 percent of Democrats in a Puck News/Echelon Insights poll, while other potential candidates remain in the single digits.
However, the poll also showed that 59 percent of Democrats would like to look beyond Harris when looking for an advocate to lead them out of the political wilderness.
United States Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris eats Doritos and thanks senior staff aboard Air Force Two.
Despite some misgivings, Harris has generated many sympathetic reactions from professional Democrats in Washington.
They describe his campaign as “almost perfect” but say he had a hard time separating himself from President Joe Biden’s record.
One quarterback compared her to the backup quarterback called upon to win the football game after they were already down in the fourth quarter.
“I think he did the best he could,” he said.
In 2028, Harris will be only 63 years old, young enough to return to politics, 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 presidential candidate.
US Vice President Kamala Harris reacts as administration staff applaud her outside the White House in Washington.
The most obvious problem, they say, is their struggle to communicate.
“Even when he talks all the time, he doesn’t really say much,” said one.
A Democratic communicator said her rapid rise from district attorney to the Senate and vice president of the United States was partly to blame for her difficulties as a candidate.
“This is someone who had a meteoric rise, her Achilles heel has been not having her own political identity, she created this layer of caution that really screwed her up,” he said.
For Harris to win again, she would have to finally define herself outside of her own ambition and put aside questions about what she truly believed.
Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki explained in a recent podcast interview with Katie Couric that politics had changed significantly since 2019, when Harris last ran in a presidential primary.
Kamala Harris appears on The View
Any candidate for the future, he said, would have to better explain his vision for the country.
“You have to be brave in how you communicate, and who and in what formats you communicate, and that means everything,” he said.
Psaki dismissed the viral tricks the Harris campaign employed during the campaign, working to attract the attention of influential celebrities and viral TikTok trends.
‘Snotty summer, which was great, didn’t work out. The young people did not attend,” he said.
A Democratic strategist agreed.
“Kamala can run again and hopefully she will improve as a messenger, but I think there are still concerns about her ability to convey a coherent message,” he said.
More damaging than ever to his campaign were the leftist positions he took during his 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 have to explain why she took those previous positions on certain issues and explain to voters why she changed her mind.
“Her rhetoric from 2019 came back to haunt her and she didn’t have a good explanation for why any of those positions had changed,” one consultant said.
Harris failed to differentiate herself from Biden and was burdened by his record as she tried to convey a message of a “new path forward.”
If Harris were to run again, four years apart could help her do so 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 and reveal the “real” Kamala Harris, they said.
An appearance on a long-form podcast, like Joe Rogan, could be good for your brand, especially if you dropped your calculated, scripted answers to questions and were authentic.
Many on the left, however, are skeptical about whether the vice president even has the political skills necessary to run for office again.
Some celebrated the end of the Democratic Party’s monumental effort to make Harris the party’s next charismatic leader, after five years of trying.
“It’s almost impossible to imagine a candidate losing as horribly as Kamala ever entering national politics again,” journalist Glenn Greenwald told DailyMail.com.
Greenwald argued that the only presidential candidate to lose so badly and make a political comeback was President Richard Nixon after his narrow loss to John F. Kennedy.
Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris, center, chats with black men at the Philly Cuts barbershop on Oct. 27, 2024, in Philadelphia.
He estimated that Harris would likely “cash in” on her political achievements, with a book deal and well-paid speeches for corporate clients, or become a “token partner in a big law firm.”
Harris, he said, had no political future on a national platform as she demonstrated she lacked critical political strengths.
“For years, until she was imposed as the Democratic candidate, and now, after the election, everyone recognized, and recognizes now, that she has little or no political talent,” he said, adding that “no one believed she was a good candidate.” .
California Democrats are also speculating that Harris could 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 probably support her for governor, according to the Berkeley Institute of Government Studies poll co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.
However, it is unclear 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 an elected official for the state of California and I doubt she wants that since she thought she would be president,” Greenwald said.