WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris formally acknowledged her loss to President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday in a defiant and emotional speech, defending her campaign as a fight for democracy that she would continue, even if not from the Oval Office.
“While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign,” Harris said.
“Hear me when I say, the light of America’s promise will always burn bright,” she added. “As long as we never give up. And as long as we keep fighting.”
Harris, her voice cracking with emotion at times, made the final speech of her presidential campaign at Howard University, her alma mater, in Washington. The results, still trickling in as Harris spoke, showed her on track to lose both the national popular vote and the top seven battleground states.
Harris ran a 107-day campaign under extraordinarily rare circumstances after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and she ricocheted to the top of the Democratic ticket. But burdened by the legacy of her incumbency, the history of a nation that was reluctant to elect a woman of color, and her unwillingness to articulate a meaningful separation from the unpopular Biden administration, Harris lost ground among most major groups of voters.
Her 12-minute concession was more than Trump ever offered to Biden and Harris after they defeated him in 2020. To this day, Trump has not conceded that race, in public or private. Now, he returns to the White House after a resounding win, still technically facing federal charges over his attempts to overturn the election four years ago.
On Wednesday, in what seemed a pointed reminder, Harris said she had called Trump earlier in the day to offer her congratulations — but also to promise that the Biden administration would “engage in a peaceful transfer of power.”
“A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results,” she said. “That principle, as much as any other, distinguishes democracy from monarchy or tyranny, and anyone who seeks the public trust must honor it.”
Many of her female supporters were crying as they left the campus’s grassy quad, known as the Yard. Against the backdrop of Frederick Douglass Memorial Hall, Harris used her speech to encourage generations behind her not to be deterred by the outcome of her barrier-breaking campaign.
“Don’t you ever listen when anyone tells you something is impossible because it has never been done before,” said Harris, the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to ascend as the nominee of a major political party. “You have the capacity to do extraordinary good in the world. And so to everyone who is watching, do not despair. This is not a time to throw up our hands. This is a time to roll up our sleeves.”
When she delivered her speech on Wednesday, Harris thanked Biden, who was watching from the West Wing, as well as her family and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota.
Walz stood off to the side, grimacing and seeming on the verge of tears. Doug Emhoff, her husband, embraced their daughter, Ella.
Harris also took a moment to address the young people watching.
“It is OK to feel sad and disappointed, but please know it’s going to be OK,” she said. “On the campaign, I would often say, ‘When we fight, we win.’ But here’s the thing, here’s the thing: Sometimes the fight takes a while. That doesn’t mean we won’t win.”
The crowd of supporters gathered at Howard was far sparser than the one that had awaited her on Tuesday evening for her election night party, hoping to witness a historic victory. Jack Ludd, 79, had missed the watch party because he was tired after his fourth trip to Pennsylvania canvassing for the Harris campaign, but he showed up to hear Harris concede.
Resting on the seat of his walker as he waited for the vice president, he said he felt “afraid” about the prospect of four more years under Trump.
“I don’t know what to expect,” said Ludd, a retired taxi driver from Washington. “I depend on Social Security.”
But he was not entirely surprised by her defeat. On his canvassing trips, Ludd said, “the buses were almost empty.”
Kadidra Hurst traveled to Howard on Wednesday to show Harris her appreciation, although she knew that the crowd would not be as big as Tuesday’s.
“I wanted Kamala to know that I still support her,” Hurst said. “I think really, we need a message of, what do we do next? And I feel like she gave us that — that we continue to fight we, we keep our foot on the gas.”
Her 5-year-old daughter, Tasmin Hurst, said it was “very good” to see Harris onstage. She said she was sad about the loss, saying Trump was “very not a nice man.”
Adriane Lowrie was brought to tears as she talked about seeing Harris leave the stage one last time. “All that she did to fight,” Lowrie said, wiping away tears. “It’s just sad, the state of our country is so divided.”
The night before, thousands of people had gathered with high enthusiasm at Howard, watching CNN on giant outdoor screens. They cheered and waved American flags when good news came in for Harris, like her unsurprising victory in California.
But when the results from the battleground states showed up, the crowd was largely silent as an anchor ticked through Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina — she trailed in all — only celebrating when her soon-to-evaporate lead in Michigan was announced. Later in the evening, the Harris campaign shut off the sound to the television screens and started playing music after a CNN guest remarked that the election felt “more like 2016 than 2020.”
Harris’ sorority sisters, clad in the pink and green of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, streamed slowly out of the campus. One broke her prayer to decline to speak with a reporter. Just before Harris officially lost Georgia, the song she chose for her campaign, “Freedom,” by Beyoncé — an ode to the journey of liberation of Black women from slavery — began blaring through loudspeakers.
Jala Dowd, a 22-year-old senior at Howard who voted for Harris, sat and watched the crowd, reflecting on what Howard taught women like her and Harris, namely “being yourself, being Black and going into the world being proud of that.”
“I don’t know what the future holds at this point,” Dowd said. “I think the world is scared of a woman leading the country, let alone a Black woman. That’s just what we face. That’s where history has led us to now.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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