Kamala Harris Makes A Surprising Statement About Re-Election

If it feels like the United States lives in a perpetual state of presidential campaigns and elections, that's because it does. As soon as one election ends, pundits and political experts begin musing about who will run in the next election in four years. The 2020 election was unusual in that the candidate who lost it continued to question the election's results. As a result, American political commentators has been predicting that former president Donald Trump will run again in 2024, although he has only hinted at it and not declared his formal candidacy (via Insider).

For the incumbent party, it's somewhat unusual to ask if a president early in his first term will run again, but that's exactly what experts and media professionals have asked about President Joe Biden since he was just a 2020 candidate. In fact, the day Biden was inaugurated on January 20, 2021, Politico ran a story asking if the brand-new president would give it another go in 2024. After all, he will be in his 80s during the intense part of the next presidential campaign, older than anyone else who has ever run for and won the presidency. Now, Vice President Kamala Harris is speaking out about the possibilities for 2024.

If Joe Biden chooses not to run for a second term in office, the conventional wisdom is that his vice president, Kamala Harris, would be at the top of the ticket. Despite all the speculation, Joe Biden hasn't cast any doubts on a second candidacy. On November 20, 2021, The Washington Post reported that Biden and his aides have made it clear to the party that he does indeed intend to run.

However, that still hasn't stopped some members of the press from speculating that he won't — and they asked Vice President Harris all about it. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Harris answered questions about Biden's possible re-election campaign with statements that illustrate a public official thinking about the job at hand rather than the next race to be won.

"I'm not going to talk about our conversations, but I will tell you this without any ambiguity: We do not talk about nor have we talked about re-election, because we haven't completed our first year and we're in the middle of a pandemic," Harris said, adding, "I'll be very honest: I don't think about it, nor have we talked about it."

While this likely won't stop all the political speculation, the vice president seems to have made herself clear on the matter — for now.