Former US Vice-President Kamala Harris has given her clearest signal yet that she intends to mount another run for the White House, telling the BBC she could “possibly” become president one day — and expressing confidence that America would “sooner or later” elect a woman to its highest office.
It was an interview both candid and calculated, part of what many in Washington now see as her slow re-emergence onto the national stage after a bruising defeat in 2024 at the hands of Donald Trump.
Harris’s words, delivered with characteristic poise, come as the Democratic Party faces a profound identity crisis. Joe Biden’s presidency ended in electoral disaster; Harris’s own run, tarnished by internal feuds and a chaotic campaign message, left deep fissures within the Democratic base. Yet her recent remarks suggest she has no intention of fading quietly into political history. For her supporters, she remains a symbol of unfinished business — the woman who could have been America’s first female president. For her detractors, she embodies the party’s lack of direction and authenticity.
The BBC interview was Harris’s first major foreign media appearance since leaving office, and her choice of outlet and tone were telling. By speaking to an international audience, she positioned herself above the domestic squabbles that have defined post-Trump America, appealing instead to global admiration for her historic role as the first woman, and the first person of African and South Asian descent, to serve as vice-president.
But this was also a political recalibration. Harris, who had been criticised during the Biden years for scripted, sometimes hesitant communication, appeared relaxed and self-assured. “I remain confident,” she said, “that we will see a woman in the Oval Office in our lifetime.” The implication was unmistakable: she still sees herself as that woman.
Her renewed visibility has been carefully timed. Democrats are already whispering about 2028, knowing that their next standard-bearer must bridge the chasm between an increasingly radical progressive wing and the disillusioned centrists who defected to Trump. Harris, who once championed criminal justice reform but later defended the Biden administration’s cautious centrism, straddles both camps uneasily.
Haunted by 2024
The memory of 2024 still hangs heavily over Harris’s ambitions. Her campaign against Trump was widely criticised for lacking a coherent message. In swing states, she struggled to connect with working-class voters who saw her as emblematic of a coastal, technocratic elite. Even among Democrats, enthusiasm waned.
Harris’s advisers at the time blamed structural sexism, claiming that no female candidate could have survived the barrage of media scrutiny she endured. Others in her party quietly accused her of mismanaging her own narrative — of trying to please everyone, and convincing no one.
In private, even some long-time supporters now concede that the Harris campaign of 2024 was “an object lesson in over-calculation.” One former staffer told The Telegraph: “She wanted to sound like a reformer without alienating Wall Street, like a moderate without offending progressives. It was impossible. She was trapped in her own contradictions.”
That analysis is not unfair. Harris entered the 2024 race with a potentially historic mandate, but her public appearances were marred by what critics called “word salads” — verbose, circular answers that invited ridicule from Republicans and despair among Democrats. Her media team overcorrected, limiting interviews and stage appearances, which in turn fuelled perceptions of over-management and insecurity.
The problem of authenticity
If Harris is to rebuild credibility for 2028, authenticity will be her biggest challenge. American voters, for all their partisan polarisation, crave conviction. Trump’s brashness may appal half the country, but it reads as sincerity to the other half. By contrast, Harris’s polished public persona — the rehearsed laughter, the legalistic phrasing — often alienates voters looking for warmth and clarity.
Her aides now hint that the former vice-president plans to reintroduce herself not as a policy wonk, but as a fighter — someone shaped by adversity, ready to challenge the cynicism that has engulfed American politics. The new Harris, they say, will speak less about bureaucracy and more about values. Whether that recalibration works remains to be seen.
The timing of Harris’s remarks also suggests a strategic gamble. The Democratic Party is fragmented, with no clear consensus on how to win back the Rust Belt or the Hispanic voters who drifted towards Trump. Governors Gavin Newsom of California and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan are quietly positioning themselves as pragmatic alternatives — leaders with executive experience, unburdened by Washington baggage.
Harris, however, still commands name recognition and a network of donors loyal to her historic symbolism. Her path back to national prominence may rely on the argument that her defeat in 2024 was less a personal failure than a reflection of broader voter fatigue with the Democrats’ fractured message.
One senior Democratic strategist put it bluntly: “If Harris can persuade people she was punished for Biden’s failures, not her own, she’s viable. If not, she’s finished.”
The gender factor
Harris’s optimism that a woman will soon enter the White House is not unfounded. Public attitudes have shifted markedly since Hillary Clinton’s 2016 defeat. Younger voters, especially women, increasingly demand gender parity in leadership. Yet sexism remains a stubborn undercurrent in American politics, and Harris knows this better than most.
Her campaign’s early reliance on identity politics in 2024 backfired among some demographics, particularly older white men and working-class voters, who saw it as divisive. To succeed in 2028, she must find a way to celebrate her trailblazing background without making it the sole centrepiece of her appeal.
Whether Kamala Harris runs again is almost secondary to what her re-emergence says about the Democrats’ malaise. The party that once presented itself as the natural home of progressivism now seems trapped between nostalgia for the Obama years and fear of another Trump presidency.
Harris’s interview with the BBC was not a formal campaign launch, but it was a declaration of intent. She remains, for better or worse, one of the few Democrats capable of commanding global attention. Her talk of “possibly” becoming president again was a lawyer’s hedge — cautious yet defiant, hinting at unfinished ambition.
If she does run in 2028, Harris will face an electorate that has grown sceptical of polished rhetoric and symbolic politics. She will need to prove that she has learned from failure, that her convictions are more than scripted talking points. Only then might she convince Americans that she deserves a second chance.
Until then, Kamala Harris remains the embodiment of a paradox — a politician with immense potential, caught between history and her own hesitations, between the hope of renewal and the shadow of her past.
Main Image: By Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America – Kamala Harris, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81684998
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