Kamala Harris has said that she currently has no desire to re-enter “the system” of American politics because it is “broken”.
On Thursday night the Democratic party’s defeated presidential nominee, who replaced Joe Biden late in the 2024 campaign after he dropped his re-election bid, gave her first interview since losing the election to Donald Trump, talking to Stephen Colbert on The Late Show.
After she announced she will not run for the governorship of California just a day earlier, Harris told the TV show that it was about something more “basic” than whether she wanted to run for something else instead — with the subtext being whether she will attempt a White House run again in 2028.
“Recently I made the decision that I just — for now — I don’t want to go back in the system. I think it’s broken,” she said, provoking a collective groan from the studio audience. Colbert later returned to the subject, saying that her remark was harrowing.
“Well, but it’s also evident, isn’t it?” she said.
Describing herself as a “devout public servant”, the former vice-president added: “I always believed, that as fragile as our democracy is, our systems would be strong enough to defend our most fundamental principles. And I think right now that they’re not as strong as they need to be. And for now I don’t want to go back into that system.”
Harris’s choice of The Late Show as the channel for her first post-election defeat interview was pointed. The most-watched talkshow was cancelled last month by the CBS network, which pleaded financial stress, though the decision was widely denounced as being politically motivated.
The cancellation was announced after Colbert had criticized CBS and its parent company Paramount Global for reaching a $16m settlement with Trump. The president had sued CBS News over an interview on the 60 Minutes show with Harris at the height of last year’s presidential campaign, which Trump claimed had been manipulated in her favour.
None of this febrile back story was mentioned by either Colbert or Harris on Thursday. But she did delivery a passionate lament for the numbers of people who she said had “capitulated” to the aggressive second Trump administration.
When Colbert invited her to say “I told you so” after she had predicted many of Trump’s most contentious moves — including Medicaid cuts, ignoring court orders, and “massive tax cuts to the rich” — she replied: “But Stephen, what I did not predict was the capitulation.” She went on: “Perhaps it’s naive of me … there should be many who consider themselves to be guardians of our system and our democracy who just capitulated, and I didn’t see that coming.”
The timing of the interview was also poignant, as she was considered to be the automatic frontrunner if she had decided to run to become the next governor of California.
Her wider remarks on “the system” help explain that decision, though they still notably left room for another possible presidential run. In the meantime, Harris has a book to sell, 107 Days, which she name-checked copiously on the Late Show in advance of its publication next month.
The book, as its title suggests, relates the story of the shortest presidential run of all time. She said it would give a “behind-the-scenes sharing” of those intense days.
Whether it is to sell the book or to lay the foundations for another presidential bid remains a moot point, but Harris said she wanted to use the next period to “travel the country and listen to people. I don’t want it to be transactional, where I’m asking for their vote.”
Harris admitted that it had taken her months following her defeat before she had the strength to tune into the news again. “You know, I’m just not into self-mutilation,” she said. Instead there had been “lots of cooking shows”, her top choice being The Kitchen.
