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Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post Supporters listen to Harris’s concession speech Wednesday at Howard University.
The Washington Post / Cleve R. Wootson Jr.
13:07 JST, November 7, 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris marked the end of a truncated but bruising campaign on Wednesday, conceding the race to President-elect Donald Trump and telling her millions of supporters that they must move forward as one nation, despite her loss.
Harris’s concession speech sought to balance her respect for the will of American voters and the dire warnings she issued about Trump on the campaign trail. Speaking from Howard University in Washington, D.C., Harris urged those who voted for her to have deference for America’s institutions even if they have disdain for Trump.
“I know folks are feeling and experiencing a range of emotions right now. I get it. But we must accept the results of this election,” she said. “In our nation, we owe loyalty not to a president or a party but to the Constitution.”
Harris added that while she concedes this election, she does not “concede the fight that fueled this campaign.” She vowed to continue fighting for reproductive rights, the end of gun violence, democracy and the rule of law.
Harris’s characterization of Trump on the campaign trail often went further than policy differences and competing visions for the country. She has bluntly described Trump as a fascist with autocratic aspirations who is out for unchecked power. She and her surrogates have spent weeks reminding voters at every turn that Trump had been convicted of 34 felony counts and impeached twice, which they cast as a sharp contrast to Harris, a former prosecutor. In her closing message before the election, Harris asked voters to envision Trump’s first day back in the Oval Office, stewing over his perceived list of enemies.
“Donald Trump has this desire to be a dictator,” she said on Howard Stern’s radio show last month. “He admires strongmen and he gets played by them because he thinks that they’re his friends. And they are manipulating him full time and manipulating him by flattery.”
Harris’s surrogates said it is important for her to appeal to her supporters’ better angels even after Trump repeatedly disparaged the vice president on the campaign trail. The race featured harsh critiques on both sides. Trump, who for years has used inflammatory and sometimes racist language, accused Harris of only identifying as Black for the sake of political expediency, deliberately mispronounced her name and repeatedly insulted her intelligence.
Trump won the electoral college in Tuesday’s election and is on pace to be the first Republican to win the popular vote since 2004. When Harris gave her concession speech on Wednesday, Trump had amassed 292 electoral votes.
Harris became the second woman to run for president as a major-party candidate, and the second to lose to Trump. The vice president’s loss was the end to an unexpected, whirlwind campaign after she replaced President Joe Biden as the Democrats’ choice in July.
Trump never conceded the 2020 election to Biden, and for the last four years he has falsely maintained that the election was rigged against him. After his defeat, he worked to overturn the results of the election, and encouraged his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol on the day the election results were set to be certified in 2021, a violent insurrection that led to his second impeachment and left six people dead.
In Wednesday’s concession speech, Harris stressed that the fight was not a physical one against other Americans, but a continuing push toward a better country.
“This is not a time to throw up our hands,” she said. “This is a time to roll up our sleeves. This is a time to organize, to mobilize and to stay engaged for the sake of freedom and justice and the future that we all know we can build together.”
Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist and Harris supporter, said Harris faced an obligation as the leader of the Democratic Party “to model what you would hope people would take away from this experience.”
“There’s a way to do it that isn’t saying we all have to get in line and support his agenda. Of course not,” Finney said. “The challenge is that when you’re talking about opposition to Trump, it feels unfair because it is unfair, because it is asymmetrical, and he uses that against opponents all the time. But that doesn’t mean you abandon your values.”
A Trump spokesman said Harris and the president-elect had a civil conversation on Wednesday centered on national unity.
“President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris spoke by phone earlier today where she congratulated him on his historic victory,” Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement. “President Trump acknowledged Vice President Harris on her strength, professionalism, and tenacity throughout the campaign, and both leaders agreed on the importance of unifying the country.”
In her role as vice president, Harris will oversee the certification of Trump’s win by Congress in January, meaning she will preside over the certification of her own loss. That certification will happen on Jan. 6, the four-year anniversary of a deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol fomented by Trump, who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
