Former Vice President Kamala Harris closed a giant door when she introduced Wednesday that she wouldn’t run for California governor. However she left open a heap of others.
Departing presidents, vice presidents, first girls and failed presidential candidates have pursued all kinds of paths previously. Empowered with title recognition and affect however with no official function to fill, they possess the liberty to decide on their subsequent journey.
Al Gore took up a trigger in international warming, whereas George W. Bush took up portray. John Kerry and Hillary Clinton went on to turn into secretary of State, whereas Donald Trump fought off prosecutors, launched new enterprise ventures and plotted his return to energy. Barack and Michelle Obama grew their basis, wrote books and began a manufacturing firm — and each have carried out podcasts, too — whereas remaining distinguished voices inside the Democratic Get together.
After all, Harris may focus all her vitality on one other run for president in 2028. However how would she try this, and what would she do to stay politically related within the meantime? Which different paths may she select as a substitute?
“She simply completed writing a guide. She’s lastly determined she’s not working for governor. However to be prescriptive about what function she’s going to play subsequent and the way it’s going to look can be untimely,” mentioned Harris senior advisor Kirsten Allen.
Specialists in energy and political management anticipate Harris’ subsequent transfer to be one thing within the public eye, given she is comparatively younger at 60 and little question needs her final chapter within the highlight to be one thing apart from her humbling loss to Trump within the 2024 presidential election.
“Even when it isn’t the governorship of California, the concept of wanting one thing else apart from the 2024 election to be the very last thing Kamala Harris ever did can be very interesting,” mentioned Gregory H. Winger, an assistant professor of public and worldwide affairs on the College of Cincinnati who has studied former presidents’ lingering affect.
Winger mentioned his analysis confirmed these “most lively in making an attempt to be influential” of their post-White Home years had been these whose time in workplace ended on a bitter word, corresponding to failing to win reelection.
“It’s form of a pissed off ambition that then leads into increased exercise,” Winger mentioned — and Harris has that.
In her announcement about not working for governor, Harris was cautious to go away her choices open — framing her hopes for the longer term round beliefs corresponding to “preventing for the American individuals.”
She mentioned she is a “religious public servant” who has lengthy believed the easiest way to make a distinction was to “enhance the system from inside.” However she additionally mentioned “our politics, our authorities, and our establishments have too usually failed the American individuals,” and that “we should be keen to pursue change by way of new strategies and contemporary considering — dedicated to our identical values and ideas, however not certain by the identical playbook.”
Harris mentioned she regarded ahead speaking to extra People whereas serving to to elect different Democrats.
Inside 24 hours, she had introduced a guide deal for her forthcoming memoir, “107 Days,” which is able to chronicle her whirlwind 2024 presidential marketing campaign, and her first interview for the reason that election on “The Late Present with Stephen Colbert” on Thursday night time.
Nathanael Quick, director of the Neely Heart for Moral Management and Determination Making on the USC Marshall Faculty of Enterprise, mentioned Harris’ discuss of “getting again out and listening” is constant together with her desirous to reclaim a distinguished nationwide function. That might imply one other presidential run, he mentioned, nevertheless it may additionally imply one thing else — significantly within the quick time period, the place she has work to do recasting individuals’s perceptions of her.
“If she will be able to create a compelling narrative about who she is, what she’s carried out, what occurred within the final election and the place she’s headed subsequent,” Quick mentioned, “she’ll be extra prone to succeed.”
Quick mentioned his wager is that she runs for president, however he may additionally see her going the route of Gore — who, after dropping the presidential election, determined to maneuver in a special route to have worldwide influence by addressing local weather change.
“I can think about somebody like Harris taking up synthetic intelligence and saying, ‘My complete factor is making an attempt to affect the nationwide dialog round what’s going to occur with AI,’” Quick mentioned.
Synthetic intelligence was a part of her portfolio as vp and is a subject Harris cares deeply about, mentioned a supply accustomed to her considering who requested for anonymity to talk candidly about her subsequent steps.
Harris additionally must tread fastidiously as she works to reassert her affect within the Democratic Get together, which continues to be reeling from a second loss to Trump, specialists mentioned.
Democrats have struggled to unify the disparate parts of their celebration and decide on kitchen-table messaging that appeals to voters in regards to the on a regular basis challenges they face, mentioned Sara Sadhwani, a politics professor at Pomona School.
After she misplaced to Trump, a convicted felon focused with a number of different legal investigations, “Harris exemplifies the shortcoming to string that needle.”
No matter Harris does to interrupt by way of, it gained’t be straightforward in at the moment’s saturated media and political market, which is so vastly totally different from what different former White Home occupants confronted.
After he declined to run for reelection in 1928, former President Coolidge wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column. At this time, Harris can be extra prone to launch a podcast — however whether or not it can catch on nationally is anybody’s guess.
Winger mentioned Harris does have large title recognition, and Quick mentioned she has most of the vital types of “capital” for a pacesetter to proceed being profitable and influential — together with monetary and social.
Nonetheless, “it’s powerful,” Winger mentioned. “It’s a really totally different media ecosystem simply due to how crowded and the way fractured it has turn into.”
Kyle Lierman, who labored for greater than six years within the Obama White Home, is now chief government of Civic Nation, a nonpartisan nonprofit that homes a number of schooling, gender fairness and voter initiatives — together with When We All Vote, the voter initiative Michelle Obama launched in 2018.
Lierman mentioned he’s excited to see what Harris does subsequent, because it’s prone to present her “greatest aspect.”
“Once you’re on the White Home, you might be engaged on a dozen totally different subjects every single day, and you are attempting to make as huge an influence as attainable earlier than the clock runs out,” Lierman mentioned. “And if you depart, you could have a chance to step again, assume long term, and go deeper on just a few points that you just’re significantly obsessed with. And I feel that’s liberating in some methods.”
Former Sen. Laphonza Butler, a longtime good friend of Harris’, mentioned the previous vp may draw from the blueprints laid out by her current predecessors.
“Whether or not you’re speaking in regards to the Clinton World Initiative or When We All Vote … or the work that’s occurring on the Obama Basis, I feel there’s loads of examples,” Butler mentioned.
Many former presidents have leveraged their expertise in international affairs — and current relationships with international leaders — to proceed holding sway in worldwide relations, significantly when members of their very own celebration return to energy. President Clinton, for example, used President Carter in that approach.
Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory College, mentioned Harris could possibly be “actually efficient” in bolstering organizations that work for racial justice and to elect girls, however mentioned “that’s not what she was organizing her political profession round” earlier than the 2024 election and it will not be the trail she chooses now.
Gillespie mentioned she learn Harris’ assertion as indicating that she was most all in favour of discovering a approach to pressure change exterior of presidency. She mentioned she may see Harris — who’s already in California, and whose husband Doug Emhoff is an leisure lawyer — shifting into manufacturing and podcasts just like the Obamas.
Gillespie mentioned she additionally may see Harris working carefully with Howard College, her alma mater in Washington, D.C., on fundraising or constructing out a brand new middle of research, as Joe Biden did on the College of Delaware.
“She’s nonetheless comparatively younger, and nonetheless may have a superb 15 to twenty years of lively engagement forward of her,” Gillespie mentioned, “in no matter kind she needs that to take.”
