During her Thursday night appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Kamala Harris explained her decision to not run for California governor next year, and her plan to steer clear from politics for now.
“Listen, I am a devout public servant. I have spent my entire career in service of the people. I thought a lot about running for governor. I love my state, I love California,” the former vice president said. “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.”
Harris continued that while she “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.”
On Wednesday, Harris announced that she would not be running for governor of California in 2026, though she did not address her plans for another presidential run, similar to her appearance on The Late Show. On Thursday, she further revealed she is releasing a new memoir, titled 107 Days, that will track her 107-day 2024 presidential campaign.
“I don’t want to go back into the system,” she added. “I want to travel the country, I want to listen to people, I want to talk with people and I don’t want it to be transactional where I’m asking for their vote.”
In response to Harris, Colbert said, “To hear you say that it’s broken, to hear you say that our systems aren’t strong enough, is harrowing.”
“But it’s also evident, isn’t it?” Harris answered. “But it doesn’t mean we give up, that’s not my point. I am always going to be part of the fight.”
The former vice president added that she believes “we have to acknowledge and agree that I mean, look, the power is with the people. That has always been the ideal and the strength of our nation, of America, that we believe fundamentally, the power is with the people.”
Harris continued, “And I believe right now, that it is important to do what I can do from the positions that I have held and what I have seen about the world in our country to get out there and remind everyone who needs reminding right now of their power. It is our government, it is our country and it is important.”
The politician also further teased what readers can expect from her memoir. “This book is basically what I would offer as a behind-the-scenes sharing of what it means to run for president. It was an intense experience,” she said, to which Colbert added, “To run for president in a way that no one had run before.”
“Well, to run for president, period, but certainly in a way that no one had done before in 107 days,” Harris clarified.
Speaking about her September 2024 debate with Trump, Colbert said she predicted a number of things that the president has since done and asked her if she wanted to say “I told you so.”
She didn’t, but she said that while she anticipated some of Trump’s actions, “what I did not predict was the capitulation.”
“Perhaps it’s naive of me, someone who has seen a lot that most people haven’t seen, but I believed that on some level, there are many, there should be many, who consider themselves to be guardians of our system and our democracy who just capitulated. And I didn’t, didn’t see that coming,” she said.
When Colbert pressed about whether those who had capitulated thought they could just “ride out the storm and everything will be fine on the other side.” Harris said that was a “completely naive” attitude and that she thinks “there are a lot of people who think they are riding out the storm as an excuse to be feckless.”
When asked who the “leader” of the Democratic party is, Harris declined to name names but, in keeping with the more collective approach to change that she expressed throughout her interview, said, “It is a mistake for us who want to figure out how to get out and through this and get out of it to put it on the shoulders of any one person. It’s really on all of our shoulders. It really is.”
Harris also spoke about what she and husband Doug Emhoff had been up to since she had left office, with the former vice president joking she didn’t watch the news for “months” because she’s not “into self-mutilation.”
Instead, she said she’d been watching “cooking shows” and shared that Emhoff was doing well as he had returned to practicing law. Though, she shared that Emhoff “dropped the ball” on her October birthday as she was running for president, something she said she writes about in the book.