Former Vice President Kamala Harris made tons of headlines this year as she promoted her post-2024 election memoir, “107 Days,” which reflects on her historic campaign for president and vice president.
In a recent profile for The New York Times, Harris, who remains a potential contender for president in 2028, reflected on her place in U.S. history, telling the outlet that, regardless of what she decides to do next, she has already secured her place in American history.
“I understand the focus on ’28 and all that,” she told the Times. “But there will be a marble bust of me in Congress. I am a historic figure like any vice president of the United States ever was.”
The 61-year-old former vice president, U.S. Senator, California Attorney General, and San Francisco District Attorney has certainly made a lot of history over the span of her 40-year career. In all of her elected roles, she was either the first woman, the first Black woman, or the first South Asian woman to hold the position. However, Harris’s 2024 quest to become America’s first female president ended in defeat to President Donald Trump.
But Harris and some Democrats aren’t counting her out for another presidential run.
“I believe if Kamala Harris would have had more time, her own infrastructure, her own people, we would have seen a different result in that election,” Dallas Jones, a Democratic strategist who worked on the Biden-Harris 2020 campaign, told theGrio.
“It was a great experiment in presidential politics, and the experiment failed,” he explained. “We started with one nominee who was a sitting U.S. president. We shifted to a historical vice president who was the first woman and the first African-American, but certainly the first woman to sit that close to the Oval Office.”
Harris, who garnered 75 million votes in the 2024 election (the third-highest of all presidential candidates), noted in her New York Times interview that swaths of the American public still want to hear from her. She pointed to the sales of her book, which became a New York Times bestseller, and ticket sales for her book tour.
“Thousands of people are coming to hear my voice. Thousands and thousands,” said Harris. “Every place we’ve gone has been sold out.”
The Times reported that the former vice president “does not fear” losing to other Democrats expected to run in 2028, should she decide to run for president a third time. The outlet cites a person close to Harris as saying that she is “unconcerned about potential rivals seizing the spotlight because she is already so well known” and that “she believes she has more time than anyone to decide about 2028.”
Former First Lady Michelle Obama, the first Black woman to serve in that role, made headlines recently when she lamented that Harris’s loss indicated that America wasn’t yet ready to elect a woman as president.
“As you saw in this past election, sadly, we ain’t ready. That’s why I’m like, don’t even look at me about running because y’all are lying,” she said during a live chat with actress Tracee Ellis Ross.
She added, “You are not ready for a woman. You are not. So don’t waste my time. We got a lot of growing up to do. And there are still sadly a lot of men who do not feel like they can be led by a woman and we saw it.”
