This Wednesday Kamala Harris gave her defeat speech outdoors, on the campus of Howard University, her university, which was created in Washington for the education of African Americans after the war against slavery. The stage was a very different place from the typical hotel room where Hillary Clinton and so many others defeated before her have acknowledged the result.
The call for unity and the attempt to inspire people to continue fighting were similar to those in other speeches, but the vice president had a more intimate tone, different in this situation. “I know people are feeling a variety of emotions right now,” Harris told a crowd of mostly young students, many African Americans and other minorities. “I get it,” he added with a chuckle, true to his style.
The speech of the still vice president, who has just turned 60, did not sound like a farewell. Previous losers who have returned to the front row of the political scene and have even reached the White House include Republican Richard Nixon and Democrat Joe Biden. And how you accept defeat matters for the future in American public life.
The speech was a hymn to civility after a campaign in which the future president called her “mentally retarded” and the next vice president, “garbage.” Harris’ words were praised by commentators on the left for her “dignity and elegance” and her “example” for Trump, and on the right for reinforcing the democratic norms that the Republican candidate has broken and achieving “the almost perfect tone.” In a context marked by the breakdown of the most basic routines, Harris’s passionate and clear defense of the peaceful transition was newsworthy.
“A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the result. That principle, as well as others, distinguishes democracy from monarchy or tyranny. “Anyone who seeks public trust must honor him,” he said that afternoon, a few hours after losing the election. Donald Trump still does not recognize his defeat in 2020, of which 1,467 days have passed.
At the same time, and in the face of the dark times that lie ahead if the elected president keeps his promises of purges, persecution and deportations, Harris recalled that citizens’ “loyalty” is not to a president or a party, but to the Constitution of USA, and that the fight also continues at a more local level. He specifically mentioned equality before the law, the freedom of women to decide and the protection of the fundamental rights of any person regardless of their origin. “We will continue to fight this fight at the polls, in the courts and in the public square. We will also release it in quieter ways: in how we live our lives, in the way we treat others with kindness and respect, looking a stranger in the face and seeing a neighbor, using our strength to lift people up, to fight for the dignity that everyone deserves.”
Harris’ message did not, in any case, suggest an abandonment of politics. “On the campaign trail, I often said that when we fight, we win. But the thing is: sometimes the fight takes time. That doesn’t mean we won’t win. The important thing is that you never give up.”
The speech, according to campaign sources, was not prepared in advance before the elections because the drafts had focused on messages calling for calm while the scrutiny progressed, which, if the 2020 experience was repeated, could last days.
The first thing
Harris remains vice president with a full term, as does Joe Biden as president, until noon on January 20, 2025, when Trump will be inaugurated. The agenda continues with the usual meetings at the White House and Harris has already said that one of her priorities is to ensure an orderly transition with the new administration. She will have to hand over to her successor, JD Vance, the former senator who in the last hours of the campaign called her “garbage” and previously questioned her loyalty to the country for not having biological children.
Harris, as vice president, will also preside over the session of Congress that will certify the election results on January 6. Neither she nor anyone in the Democratic Party has questioned the results, so it is expected that the process will be completed following the usual ceremony.
The last time it was a presidential candidate’s turn to lead the session of Congress that certified his defeat was in 2001, when Democrat Al Gore had to do the same after a tense and controversial scrutiny in his race against George W. Bush that was resolved by a vote in the Supreme Court. Several Democratic and African-American members of the House of Representatives, most of them women, tried to object to the process to protest the interrupted recount in Florida, but, without the support of any senator, Gore repeatedly said that he could not accept the objections.
California?
Harris, who was born in Oakland, has spent most of her career in California, as district attorney, attorney general and senator from this state. His home is still there, as is the majority of his family, and this could be a way out in one of the most populated states in the United States, which is also once again in full transformation due to the influence of the increasingly conservative technology sector. and close to the Republican Party.
The defeat of some progressive measures in referendums last Tuesday – for example, to end forced labor in prisons – indicates a more complex context in the state that has been a bastion of the left in recent decades. In 2020, Biden won California by almost 30 points, but this year Harris’ victory may be by a smaller margin. There are still more than 40% of the votes to be counted in this state, but the Democrat’s advantage at this point in the count is closer to 20 points.
The most obvious race for Harris is that of governor of the state. The elections are in 2026 and the current governor, Gavin Newsom, can no longer run due to term limits. Harris would have to go through the Democratic primaries, which are already crowded and that would mean competing with her allies such as the lieutenant governor.
Another option for Harris would be to run for the Senate again, but this route is more unlikely as long as neither of the two current Democrats retire.
Kamala 2028?
The Democrats have already begun an internal fight for the soul of the party and the country, similar to that of 2016 and whose future will largely depend on who establish themselves as possible candidates for the 2028 presidential primaries. In the United States, the Parties have little structure and little power beyond the channels for raising money, so the course will be set by the people who gain strength in the public debate in the coming years.
Within the multiple debates about what happened in these elections, one of the most accepted ideas is that Harris, whether or not she was a victim of the misogyny and racism that a part of the population continues to feel, had a difficult path ahead of her because of the unpopularity of Biden and the Administration of which she remains a part. “I don’t think that a party in power has ever won with such a low position in the question of whether the United States is on the right path,” David Axelrod, who was the head of Barack Obama campaign. Now, after the result, Axelrod praises the Harris campaign for its organization in the little more than three months of margin it had after Biden’s late withdrawal, particularly for the convention, the debate and the effort in the key states, where Harris concentrated the entire campaign and lost by an average of three points, that is, half of the national estimate.
“Historical markers were leaning to the right. “Everyone was clear that it was a difficult bet,” historian Leah Wright Rigeour, a specialist in politics and race, also said this Thursday in a talk about the elections. At the same time, she highlighted “the radical enthusiasm” that Harris’s campaign aroused among black women, in particular, who are, as she recalled, “the backbone of the Democratic Party.” There are no more loyal voters and they will not forget some milestones in this unexpected campaign, such as the Zoom call of 90,000 black women supporting Harris a few hours after Biden’s withdrawal and which was blocked by the number of women trying to enter.
Harris could run again in the Democratic primary in 2028 and would have to compete with rising stars of the party, notably Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Another eager to run is Newsom, the governor of California. New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has also turned 35, the minimum age to be president under the Constitution.
Among the precedents of defeated candidates who tried again successfully is another Californian, Richard Nixon, who lost the presidential elections of 1960 and the California gubernatorial elections in 1962, and then won the presidential elections of 1968 and 1972. Another example is Biden, who lost in the Democratic primaries in 1998 and 2008, and managed to win them and be elected president in 2020. Trump’s failure in the elections of 2020 did not stop him either – neither the two political impeachment processes, nor the convictions in cases of bribery and sexual abuse, nor the pending trials for trying to alter the result of the elections and inciting the assault on the Capitol.
Supreme Court Judge?
In a moment of panic about what lies ahead, Democratic sources suggest that Biden should take advantage of the remaining two months of transition to appoint another younger person to the Supreme Court to replace Sonia Sotomayor. The judge is 70 years old, suffers from diabetes and has shown no signs that she wants to retire, but nervousness over the possibility that Trump will appoint another person to the Supreme Court during his term and achieve an overwhelming majority of seven to two has put some democrats on the move. The favorite in this case would be Michelle Childs, a centrist jurist who could have the support of some Republican senators.
But we must not forget that Harris is a jurist and has a longer career than other politicians in law enforcement and more responsibility having headed the California Department of Justice, the second largest in the country, after the federal one. Supreme Court judge seems unlikely in the current context, but not another position in the justice system.
In a future Democratic government, if the party returns to the White House from 2029, Harris would also have possibilities in a cabinet, just as John Kerry was Secretary of State after losing the 2004 elections.
A foundation?
Like other former candidates before her, Harris may give lucrative speeches or write books, but her early messages do not seem to indicate a desire to work for private, for-profit companies. Those who know her best believe she could work for a foundation or other social or political activism organization to promote the rights of women or minorities.
One of his most repeated phrases in the campaign is that his “main client” has always been “the people,” and that is exactly the message he shared in public after his defeat. “For the people. Always” (by or for the people, always).
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