Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
At the beginning of the month, Kamala Harris did what every celebrity in Los Angeles does on Oscar weekend — she went to a party. She was welcomed warmly, and attendees quickly leaked to the media that she "looked great, very relaxed, almost like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders."
Her party appearance was meant to be a prelude to her scheduled appearance at the Oscars, which would have been her most significant TV exposure since leaving Washington on January 20. After four years as vice president and an unprecedented 100-day presidential campaign that cost over a billion dollars and ended in a crushing defeat, Harris was set for a high-profile comeback.
However, security concerns at the event led to the cancellation of her appearance. Instead, her husband, Doug Emhoff, posted a photo of her in a sweatshirt, preparing a bowl of Doritos to watch the ceremony from home.
The Oscar weekend wasn’t a total loss. At the pre-Oscar party, Harris hinted at her next move, telling several people she would "make a decision by the end of summer." What exactly that decision is remains unclear — even to her.
"She’s very slow to make decisions, sometimes excessively so," said a senior Democratic official. "But if she wants to stay in politics, she’ll need to decide quickly because there’s a huge vacuum."
On January 6, in her role as vice president, Harris officially certified Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election. No mobs stormed the Capitol, no gallows were erected outside and no congressional offices were ransacked. Harris confirmed her defeat with the same composure she’s known for, never revealing what was happening beneath the surface.
"For president? I’m afraid she won’t be able to get there," said one Democratic strategist. "But she got 75 million votes in a short, high-pressure campaign and earned a lot of goodwill by breathing life into Joe Biden’s dead race. We live in unprecedented times, so who knows?"
Afterward, she traveled to Hawaii to unwind with family and friends before returning to Washington for Trump’s inauguration. In the same Capitol where she certified Trump’s victory, she watched the new president deliver a speech devoid of magnanimity and filled with threats — threats he has since acted on.
Between the time Harris and Emhoff left the vice president’s residence for the last time and the end of the inauguration, government workers efficiently scrubbed all traces of the previous tenants.
Harris, sources said, left without sentimentality. She had always planned to leave that day, just under different circumstances — moving four kilometers (2.5 miles) from the Naval Observatory to the White House. Instead, she found herself living out the real-life version of the famous meme of John Travolta looking lost in an empty room.
"There was no Plan B," said a Democratic activist. "Her campaign team genuinely believed she was winning — a close victory, but a victory."
Can Harris bounce back from a defeat like that?
"For president? I doubt it. But she got 75 million votes in a tough race and built goodwill by energizing Biden’s campaign. She may think she has one more run left in her. One thing is clear: when Harris said she wouldn’t go quietly into the night, she meant it."
Immediately after Trump’s inauguration, as he signed executive orders undoing much of the administration Harris was part of, she boarded her final taxpayer-funded flight. Nearly six hours from Washington to Los Angeles is a long time to sit with your thoughts.
If Harris broke down after the November loss, only her husband saw it. Two months later, on that flight back to California, there was an odd sense of relief. "I’m staying in the fight," she assured her disheartened allies.
"No one in American political history can truly understand what Harris went through," Democratic pollster Paul Maslin told Politico. "And I don’t envy her. She deserves time to process it."
Donna Brazile, a close ally who ran Al Gore’s campaign — the last vice president to run for president and lose — agreed. "She needs time to process what happened because it’s deeply personal. Despite the loss, she gained significant political capital. You don’t waste that by making rash decisions."
Harris and Emhoff returned to their $4.8 million home in Brentwood, Los Angeles. It will remain their primary residence but sources say they’re looking for a second home in New York. While many neighbors were happy to see them, not everyone welcomed them back. "I’m ashamed she lives in my neighborhood," a Trump voter told the New York Post. "She should be in the White House, not here," said a Harris supporter.
Of the two, Emhoff seemed more relieved to be back in L.A. The first-ever "Second Gentleman" had struggled with being a political spouse. He spoke candidly about his search for purpose in Washington, which he found in fighting antisemitism and teaching at Georgetown Law. Shortly after returning home, he resumed his entertainment law career, a job he reluctantly left when Harris became Biden’s running mate.
In the early months of Trump’s presidency, Harris was rarely seen in public, except for occasional grocery runs with Emhoff. In late February, she made her first televised appearance since leaving the White House, accepting an honorary award from the NAACP. The audience gave her a long ovation, with some in tears.
"This organization was born when our nation struggled against greed, bitterness and hate," Harris told Black community leaders. "Now, we again feel the weight of history. People see flames on the horizon, shadows gathering over our democracy, and ask, ‘What do we do now?’ But we know exactly what to do — because we’ve done it before and we’ll do it again."
That speech marked the beginning of her reemergence. Even before the NAACP event, she had attended two Broadway shows in one weekend, receiving applause similar to what Hillary Clinton experienced after losing to Trump in 2016. Broadway remains a safe haven for liberal politicians.
For the first time in decades, Harris holds no public office, meaning she must build her own infrastructure for a comeback. To that end, she launched a company called Pioneer 49 to support her post-vice presidency career and potentially fuel her next political move.
Pioneer was her Secret Service codename, and 49 reflects her status as the 49th vice president. She also signed with the top talent agency CAA for representation across various fields. Now, she just needs to decide what’s next.
Harris has three main options: run for California governor in 2026, launch another presidential bid in 2028, or stay on the sidelines while leading the Democratic Party from the outside, making money in the private sector and writing cookbooks.
The third option seems unlikely. "She won’t stay quiet for long," said a former campaign aide. "People will want to hear from her and she’ll be ready."
Not by chance did Harris say she'd decide by summer what her next step would be. Summer is the time to enter the race for California governor, a race she's expected to win easily. “Can she run for governor? Yes,” Brian Brokaw, a former aide to Harris who remains close to her, told Politico. “Do I think she wants to run for governor? Probably not. Can she win? Absolutely. Does she want the job? I don’t know. Can she run for president again? Yes.”
In conversations with associates, Harris has acknowledged how difficult it would be for her to win the presidential primaries in 2028 and has recalled that even as a young prosecutor, she expressed interest in becoming California’s governor.
Now, she might find the idea especially tempting — leading the largest and most influential state in the U.S., she'd find herself clashing with Trump on nearly every issue. “Harris is disgusted by him,” said a Democratic activist.
“Beyond the fact that he's a racist, she thinks — rightfully so — that his presence in the White House is a disgrace to the U.S. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that she won’t be able to resist the temptation to battle him every day.” If this does happen, Harris will break another glass ceiling, becoming the first woman to serve as governor of California.
As governor, she'd have plenty of opportunities to confront Trump. The main implication of entering the California race is that Harris would be giving up her presidential ambitions, at least for 2028. It’s impossible to both govern the world’s fifth-largest economy and run for president. The decision is harder than it seems.
Those close to Harris believe that despite her election loss, she emerged from the experience stronger and won’t carry the toxic label that stuck to Hillary Clinton after her 2016 defeat. Just how toxic is that label? The only time Harris’s campaign used Clinton during the election was at a fundraiser in Florida — a state that wasn’t even competitive.
Preliminary and largely irrelevant polls conducted in recent months have shown Harris with a significant lead over a long list of potential Democratic candidates, but there’s no reason to take them seriously just yet. “I don’t think she can win a presidential primary,” the Democratic activist said.
“The party is so scared and weak right now that there's a better chance of the late Jimmy Carter becoming the nominee in 2028 than a Black woman. It’s unfair and depressing because no one in modern history has inherited a presidential candidacy just 100 days before an election and I don’t think any other candidate would have done better — but that’s where we are now. If she wants to stay in politics, the California governorship makes much more sense.”
One thing Harris will definitely do is write a book, which has already generated enormous interest — even before she’s typed a single word. “Kamala is about to land the biggest book deal of any vice president in history,” Keith Urbahn, president and co-founder of the top literary agency Javelin, told NBC.
“But the real question isn’t how much she’ll get upfront, but whether the book can redefine her ahead of the 2028 election. There’s one version of the book that’s full of clichés and plays it safe and there’s another that reinvents Harris to lead a party in need of rebuilding. She’ll get the same money either way but only the second version gives her another shot at the White House.”
Biden may have publicly said that Harris had to do whatever it took to defeat Trump, but in private, he told her to ensure that “not even daylight could come between them” — in other words, not to distance herself from him.
The desire among Harris’s supporters for her book to “burn it all down” also stems from post-election revelations about how Biden boxed her in. Harris is 60, still young enough, and Democrats are placing most of the blame for her loss on Biden, who entered the 2020 race as the party’s beloved savior and left office in January as a tragic figure.
“It’s all on him,” the Democratic activist said angrily. “We could analyze Harris’s campaign mistakes until next year but she was thrown into an impossible situation created by Biden’s enormous ego. He should never have run again in the first place. We’re here because of Joe Biden and the small, insular circle around him. In fact, they’re even more to blame — they knew he shouldn’t run.”
The question of how candid Harris can be in her upcoming book is tied to her decision about staying in politics and in what role. But her associates believe that at the very least, she must use the book to do what she didn’t in her campaign — sever all ties to Biden.
“That was the biggest mistake of her life,” said the Democratic activist. “Every time I think about the chances she had to break away from him and present a completely new vision and she chose not to — my veins start popping.”
Biden, it turns out, forbade Harris from creating any policy distance between them during the campaign. A new book by journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,” provides several examples of how Harris knew she needed to appear as a change agent compared to her deeply unpopular boss.
But Biden had appointed her as his VP, quickly endorsed her candidacy, and in doing so, shut down any chance of a rapid primary — at the cost of her continued loyalty. While Biden publicly said that Harris had to do everything to defeat Trump, in private, he reminded her once again: “Not even daylight, kid.”
That was a message Biden’s aides reinforced with Harris at nearly every stop, according to the book’s authors. For example, when Harris was preparing for her first joint television interview with her running mate, Tim Walz, veteran Democratic communications strategist Stephanie Cutter gave her a list of achievements she could say she was proud to have shared with Biden.
Harris’s loyal adviser, Sean Clegg, pushed back: “Let’s not turn this into a memoir.” He was absent from the next round of media prep sessions.
During the interview with CNN, Harris found herself reciting a laundry list of Biden’s policies. Even worse, she sat in a lower chair than Walz. That may sound petty, but the visual only reinforced the perception that she was afraid to answer tough questions about the White House’s policies over the past four years and that she wasn’t built for leadership.
On the day of the infamous debate against Trump, Biden called Harris to wish her luck and once again stress the loyalty he expected. It took him just a few words to make it clear how important it was to him: “Not even daylight, kid.” Later, in one of the campaign’s pivotal moments, Harris said on The View that “I can’t think of anything I would have done differently from Biden.”
In hindsight, of all the many reasons for Harris’s defeat, that may have been the most critical. At least six million people who voted for Biden in 2020 did not vote for Harris in 2024. Polls conducted since then repeatedly show that the main reason was Harris’s refusal to distance herself from Biden’s policies, both at home and abroad.
“We played it too safe,” Tim Walz said last week in a media blitz aimed at 2028. “We should have gone to places that don’t like us, met voters and heard them yell at us. But we were always on the defensive. We played not to lose, even though I don’t think we were ever really ahead.”
Walz revealed that since the election, he and Harris have spoken only twice. “I’m doing my job, and she’s doing hers. We had a professional relationship, I think we ended things well, and my family misses her.
“She inspired me. When I found out that as a kid she was in a band and knew so much about music, I asked, ‘Why aren’t we running this in the campaign ads?’ I really regret that there’s so much America never knew about her — and we lost a great president.”