Kamala Harris Back on the Campaign Trail but Still Undecided on 2028

ATLANTA, Nov 2- Two years after losing the presidential election to Donald Trump, Kamala Harris received a rock star’s welcome at Clark Atlanta University on Thursday.

The students at the historically Black university didn’t chant her name. Instead, they broke into a school spirit chant for the Atlanta University Center, the group of Black colleges in the city. Harris studied at Howard University, another historically Black school, and many in the room saw her as one of their own.

Sanaiya Archer, a second-year student at nearby Spelman College, described Harris as a “big sister” figure. She said she could see herself in Harris—a Black woman who attended a school like hers and rose to the highest levels of national politics.

That path has not yet led to the Oval Office. In 2024, after Joe Biden withdrew from the race, Harris ran a 107-day campaign for the White House—the shortest in modern American history—and lost to Trump.

Trump’s return left Democrats shaken. As the party campaigns in this week’s midterm elections, it has still not settled on who should lead it next, or how.

Harris has not ruled out another run, but she has declined to say whether she plans to seek the presidency again.

“I haven’t decided yet,” she told actress Keke Palmer on a podcast this month. She promised she would decide, but said the midterms come first, and that 2028 won’t matter if Democrats don’t get 2026 right.

She has said much the same thing at stop after stop. In Detroit, she told voters she had not decided whether to run again, and that what matters most is getting through the next election.

On the Atlanta campus, Harris spoke with students about the difficult months since her defeat. She said many people had experienced anger, sadness, depression, and a feeling of powerlessness as events unfolded. She told them that moment had passed and urged them not to let anyone take away their power or define who they are.

Over the past month, Harris has been campaigning for other Democrats, largely before supportive crowds.

In Mississippi, she held a rally at a high school in Columbus and joined a discussion on rural health care in Clarksdale. She was there to support Scott Colom, the Democrat challenging Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. Polls suggest the race is closer than usual in a state that has long leaned Republican.

In Las Vegas, she met union culinary workers to back Aaron Ford, Nevada’s attorney general, who is in a tight race for governor against Republican Joe Lombardo.

She has also campaigned for David Crowley, the Democratic candidate for governor in Wisconsin, and Chris Pappas, the party’s Senate candidate in New Hampshire. In September, she went to Michigan, a state Trump won in 2024, to support Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

Several of those states hold early contests in Democrats’ calendar for choosing their 2028 presidential nominee.

In Georgia, she campaigned with Senator Jon Ossoff, who is also talked about as a possible 2028 candidate. Ossoff is expected to keep his seat comfortably. At one event, Harris was announced on stage too early, before Ossoff, leaving the room briefly confused.

Ossoff used the rally to attack Trump over his focus on the 2020 election results in Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta. He accused the president of racism, saying Trump was angered that Black voters helped defeat him.

Republicans hit back. Georgia Representative Mike Collins, a Republican, said Ossoff’s decision to bring in Harris said it all, and called her a failed candidate and a failed vice president, according to local television.

Turnout has surged in Georgia, especially in Black communities and in the closely divided suburbs around Atlanta. About 2.8 million votes were cast by the end of early voting, a record, putting turnout at 37% so far.

On Friday evening, Harris spoke at a fundraising dinner for Democrats in Fulton County. She returned to a theme she has pushed over the past year: that the country can’t simply be patched up after Trump leaves office, and needs bigger change.

She called Trump’s government the most corrupt in the nation’s history. She pointed to his plan to hand out checks from tariff money, and to reports that a worker who handled the president’s teleprompter made money betting on prediction markets about what Trump would say next. The White House has not responded to those remarks.

Harris also had a message for her own party. She said Democrats must not waste power if they win it back. She said that will take a certain kind of ruthlessness, not in being cruel, but in being willing to use power to keep promises. She said the party can no longer let process get in the way of progress.

Some of the students who waited outside the hall to catch a glimpse of Harris want her to run again.

Naomi Blakey and Carington Hill, both first-year students at Clark Atlanta, have just turned 18. Blakey said she was upset when Trump won in 2024 and wants another chance to vote for Harris, having been too young to do so last time.

Hill also wants Harris to run, but has doubts. She worries that the country is still not ready to elect a Black woman as president and that voters’ biases could resurface. She said she was not referring to herself or her friends, but to other voters.