Vice president Kamala Harris launched her presidential campaign from a standing start three months ago. And on Wednesday afternoon, it came to an end, unable to overcome Donald Trump’s sweeping gains in former Democratic strongholds.
Harris made her final speech of the campaign on the grounds of her alma mater Howard University, before a crowd dotted with red eyes and tear-stained cheeks. As she had so many times on the campaign trail, Harris entered to the sound of Beyoncé’s “Freedom.” This time the song’s lines “a winner don’t quit on yourself” hit home differently. As Harris spoke, the crowd’s energy was dampened by the sting of loss.
“My heart is full today,” Harris told his supporters, many of whom had been in the same spot in front of Frederick Douglass Memorial Hall the night before, hoping for a different result. Someone in the crowd shouted, “We love you!” and Harris replied, “I love you back!” She went on to say that she is “full of love for our country and full of determination.” She said she is “so proud” of the race she ran “and how we ran it.”
She had wanted it to be a victory speech, not a concession, but she said she was willing to accept the outcome, and she expected everyone else to be, too. Harris drew a contrast to how Trump handled his defeat to Joe Biden in 2020. Trump refused to accept his loss and sparked a violent riot in the Capitol on January 6, 2021 to try to topple it. “I know people are feeling and experiencing a range of emotions right now — I get that,” Harris said with a small smile, alluding to some of the personal toll the campaign roller coaster has taken. When she mentioned that Trump had won the election, boos moved through the audience. “We have to accept the results,” Harris said.
Harris made a point of saying that she and President Joe Biden will engage in a “peaceful transfer of power,” which she described as an act that “distinguishes democracy from monarchy or tyranny.” In a scathing criticism of Trump’s public demands for loyalty from those who work for him, Harris said Americans “owe loyalty not to a president or a party, but to the Constitution of the United States.”
Harris insisted that while the campaign was over, her work was not done. “While I concede this election, I do not concede the struggle that drove this campaign,” she said. She vowed to continue working to ensure women “have the freedom to make decisions about their own bodies” and fight for the rule of law and equal justice.
She implored Americans to treat “each other with kindness and respect” and “use our strength to lift people up.”
She wanted kids watching to know that “it’s going to be OK.” She said her chant on the campaign trail, “when we fight we win,” still rings true. But, she added, “sometimes the fight takes a while — that doesn’t mean we won’t win.”
The crowd listened intently but lacked the sparkling energy that had marked many of her rallies during her three-month sprint for the White House. She filled arenas with people chanting “We’re not going back” and crowds eager to hear her describe how, as a California attorney general, she prosecuted predators, fraudsters and fraudsters, as she concluded her punchline: “I know Donald Trump’s type.”
Her central pitch to voters, that she would “turn the page” on Trump and work to protect abortion access and lower costs for middle-class families, did not catch on. Her message was swamped by Trump’s inflammatory descriptions of immigrants and murderers and rapists, his attacks on critics as the “enemy within” and his insistence that only he could fix the nation’s high prices and immigration challenges.
In parting, Harris said she wanted to leave the crowd with a reminder of a saying that says “Only when it’s dark enough can you see the stars.” Harris said she knows people feel the country is “entering a dark time” and she hopes that’s not the case. “If it is, let us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion stars.”
