Kamala Harris has reemerged following her election defeat to Donald Trump to deliver a message of hope to her supporters.
Harris, who has been lying low since she lost the race for the White House earlier this month, shared a defiant address on Tuesday night where she told her supporters: “Don’t let anyone take your power.”
“You have the same power that you did before November 5. And you have the same purpose that you did,” Harris said in the 30-second clip shared on the Democratic party’s X account.
“And you have the same ability to engage and inspire. So don’t ever let anybody or any circumstance take your power from you.”
Harris has been in Hawaii with her family and senior aides following the election, as she and her husband Doug Emhoff prepare to vacate the Naval Observatory in Washington DC – the official residence of the vice president.
As for her next move, Harris reportedly told aides that she wants to keep her options open. Sources close to the Harris family told Politico that the vice president has vowed to “stay in the fight” and may even run for governor of California in 2026.
The sources said Harris would be pondering her path forward over the coming holiday season, but has told allies and advisers she doesn’t want to rule anything out, including the possibility of running for president again in 2028.
“She doesn’t have to decide if she wants to run for something again in the next six months,” one former campaign aide told the outlet. “The natural thing to do would be to set up some type of entity that would give her the opportunity to travel and give speeches and preserve her political relationships.”
While Harris has been avoiding the spotlight, some of her top campaign staffers have broken cover for the first time to share what they believe went wrong.
Campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon and senior campaign adviser Stephanie Cutter told the Pod Save America podcast that they believe Harris failed to tap into a certain culture where Trump succeeded.
“It’s my understanding that you guys wanted to do a bunch of the larger more popular, not specifically political, podcasts. Can you talk a little about why that may not have happened?” host Dan Pfieffer asked.
He gave the example of Hot Ones, in which A-list celebrities answer questions while eating spicy chicken wings.
“I think if I remember correctly on Hot Ones that they didn’t want to delve into politics,” Cutter replied.
“And that’s across the board,” Dillon chimed in. “I do think we had a lot of support in a number of, you know, athletes and others that were just not super interested in getting their brand caught up in the politics of this campaign and I don’t think [Trump] had the same problem.”
Dillon conceded that Trump was “able to tap into some cultural elements” in ways the Harris campaign could not, hinting at the president-elect’s three-hour appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast.
“I think that that had an impact on us that there were places that we knew we had support that we desperately wanted to go and have conversation that we thought would be interesting and relevant and fun, and we couldn’t get there,” she said.
