What’s Next for Kamala Harris? Here Are Six Options.

In 74 days, Vice President Kamala Harris will leave office, with no concrete plans about what to do next or how to proceed as a private citizen for the first time since she was elected San Francisco’s district attorney in 2003.

Her friends, aides and political allies have said in the hours since her loss to former President Donald J. Trump that it is too soon to even contemplate, let alone plan, the next phase of her life, except to say that the 60-year-old Ms. Harris will have plenty of options.

Like the defeated presidential nominees who came before her, Ms. Harris is experiencing incredible political whiplash. On Tuesday morning, she was the leader of the Democratic Party and widely seen as its future. By Thursday, officials were privately saying they expected her to remain engaged but assumed the party would want to move on from the Biden era as soon as possible.

“I believe that she is more respected than ever within our party,” said Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis of California, a longtime Harris ally. “I think the question really is, what does she want to do? Right now I’m sure she is simply trying to process. But I have no doubt that she will have an answer to this in the coming months.”

Here are six options for Ms. Harris as she contemplates her post-vice presidency.

Bide her time and run again in 2028

Democrats have not exactly hungered for their defeated presidential nominees to try again. After her 2016 loss, Hillary Clinton came to be seen as a deeply flawed candidate. She has maintained a rapport with donors, but when it came time for the Harris campaign to deploy her as a surrogate, Mrs. Clinton held an event in Tampa, far from a battleground state.

John Kerry returned to the Senate and eventually became secretary of state. Al Gore briefly entertained running for president again in 2004 but later endorsed Howard Dean in the Democratic primary race.