The vice president will be able to cash in on the 2024 election whether she ends up as commander-in-chief or not.
If the past is precedent, the vice president will be able to cash in on the 2024 election whether she ends up as commander-in-chief or not.
On Sunday at 1:46 p.m., Kamala Harris became the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination; on Monday, she became the presumptive nominee. Despite her newborn campaign, the vice president has already lined up the delegates she’ll need at the Democratic convention in August, and she has racked up endorsements from the president and the vast majority of Democratic governors, Senators and House members. A record-breaking flood of donations to her campaign will help keep her competitive with Donald Trump and JD Vance.
In the short term, she’ll actually make out better if she loses. Between leaving office in 2021 and a futile run for president in 2023, for example, Mike Pence quadrupled his estimated net worth from $1 million to $4 million by hitting the speaking circuit and writing a memoir. After choosing not to run in 2016 following his son’s death, Joe Biden and his wife Jill raked in more than $17 million in income from two memoirs and teaching and speaking gigs, boosting his estimated net worth from $2.5 million to $8 million. (He’s worth $10 million today, thanks mostly to appreciation of his real estate in Delaware.) Harris, even if fresh off a 2024 loss, could lean into these tried-and-true methods of making money for ex-politicians and build her nest egg further.
