Kamala Harris conceded defeat in the 2024 presidential race against Donald Trump in remarks from her alma mater Howard University, formally ending her historic campaign against her Republican rival after her decisive losses in a series of hard-fought battleground states that President Joe Biden won just four years ago.
“My heart is full today,” the vice president said in remarks to supporters from the university campus in Washington DC on Wednesday evening.
“Full of gratitude for the trust you’ve placed in me, full of love for our country, and full of resolve,” she added.
Several thousand supporters poured into Howard University for her concession speech, a somber event with a DJ playing dance tracks and campaign volunteers handing out American flags for guests to wave. One woman was spotted filming herself on a TikTok miming tears coming down her face before going back to absentmindedly dancing in place.
Many Howard students were in the crowd, including a handful dressed in fraternity and sorority outfits. Some seemed to be fighting back tears. Jaime Harrison, the stone-faced chair of the Democratic National Committee, passed reporters on the back of a golf cart as he waved to a few supporters. He announced today that he would not seek re-election.
“The outcome of this election was not what we wanted, not what we fought for, not what we voted for, but hear me when I say: the light of America’s promise will always burn bright, and as long as we never give up, and as long as we keep fighting,” Harris told the assembled guests.
The candidates confirmed they spoke with one another on Wednesday, and that Harris “congratulated him on his historic victory,” according to Trump’s campaign communications director Steven Cheung.
“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,” he added.
Trump, as he declared victory in the early morning hours on Tuesday, called his election a “political victory that our country has never seen before” that would usher in a “golden age.”
A veteran of his first term in the White House, Olivia Troye, told The Independent as she entered Harris’s event on Wednesday that she was worried a second Trump presidency would be fully unhinged.
“Am I shocked? Yes. Am I horrified at what's to come? Yes. I lived the Trump presidency the first time around,” Troye said. “My greatest concern is that people like myself, people like General [Mark] Milley, Mark Esper won’t be there... and I think about what this future administration looks like.”
She went on to predict that Americans who voted for Trump without knowing the full implications of his second crack at governing were in for a “rude awakening”.
Harris said that the Biden-Harris administration is prepared to work with the incoming Trump team and to “ensure a peaceful transfer of power” — drawing an unspoken contrast to Trump’s baseless attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost, culminating in a mob of his supporters launching a violent assault inside the Capitol.
One of the loudest cheers for her speech came as the vice president commented that her supporters would back a peaceful transfer of power and honor the election results.
“A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results. And anyone who seeks the public trust must honor it,” she added. “We owe loyalty not to a president or a party but to the Constitution of the United States.”
That peaceful transition distinguishes the US “from monarchy and tyranny,” Harris said in her 12-minute remarks, powered by campaign anthem “Freedom” by Beyonce. The song, which has followed the vice president across the country, was blasted loudly as guests poured out — one woman in her mid-30s visbly broke down sobbing as she left, the song blaring behind her.
While Harris admitted defeat in this race, she said she will “not concede the fight that fueled this campaign.”
She urged against “despair,” returning to her “when we fight, we win” slogan to reminder her supporters that the fight often “takes a while.”
“To the young people who are watching: it is OK to feel sad and disappointed,” she said. “But please know it’s going to be OK.”
Fatima Goss-Graves, co-founder of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, was at the speech and told The Independent that she was “devastated” by the result.
“I knew I had to come out today because Vice President Harris and Governor Walz, they have run a tremendous campaign that put the issues that women in this country are facing center, issues that families in this country are facing in the center, and did it with hope and dignity,” she said, adding: “It's devastating to get the results.”
The campaign, she said, was “an invitation for us all to dream for something better for ourselves. So I needed to be here.”
Harris, who would have been the first woman to hold the presidency, finished by telling supporters not to “ever listen when anyone tells you something is impossible because it has never been done before.”
