Vice President Kamala Harris Wednesday afternoon called Donald Trump to concede the 2024 presidential race, according to a senior Harris aide.
During the call, the Democratic presidential nominee “discussed the importance of a peaceful transfer of power and being a president for all Americans,” the senior aide said.
Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign communications director said in a statement that during the call 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.”
Harris delivered a concession speech at 4 p.m. Eastern to her supporters at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, was in the crowd as well.
“The outcome of this election is not what we wanted,” she said. “But hear me when I say this: The light of America’s promise will always burn bright.”
Harris told her supporters to not be discouraged by the results, but to continue the fighting and organizing.
“Sometimes the fight takes a while,” she said. “This is not a time to throw up our hands, this is a time to roll up our sleeves.”
The college was also the site of her election watch party on Tuesday night, which quickly turned somber after her path to the White House narrowed when the southern battleground states of North Carolina and Georgia swung to Trump.
Harris, who was originally expected to attend her own election night party, never arrived on campus, disappointing supporters and Howard alums.
Trump was declared the presidential winner early Wednesday, according to projections by The Associated Press.
Harris said it was important to accept the results of the race – something that Trump did not do four years ago, leading to a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
“That principle, as much as any other, distinguishes democracy from monarchy or tyranny and anyone who seeks the public trust must honor it,” she said. “At the same time, in our nation, we owe loyalty not to a president or a party, but to the Constitution of the United States.”
Harris said that while she concedes the election, “I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign.”
The presidential race isn’t the only loss for Democrats. They lost control of the U.S. Senate and Republicans are favored to take the House, potentially giving the GOP a trifecta in Washington.
The election saw a deep gender divide, with exit poll surveys showing women tended to favor Harris over Trump.
It’s the second time a woman has led as the presidential candidate for a major party and it’s the second time a woman has lost to Trump. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton lost to him in 2016.
The election came two years after the constitutional right to an abortion was stripped away by the U.S. Supreme Court. The incoming 47th president cemented its conservative majority by hand-picking three justices.
Harris, whose bid only began in July after President Joe Biden suspended his reelection campaign, had a little over 100 days to pick a running mate, release policy plans to appeal to voters and hit the seven battleground states.
Despite the sprint of a campaign, Harris said she was grateful for the campaign she and Walz ran and the coalition they built along the way.
Some of that coalition was fractured, though. There was deep dissatisfaction within her party for the current administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Michigan, which has a high Arab American population and is a state that Biden won in 2020, voted for Trump, according to projections by The Associated Press.
It was Harris’ second time running for the White House, after her first run quickly fizzled in 2019 before Biden picked her as his running mate.
With Biden out of the race following a disastrous June debate that rattled his party’s belief he could win a rematch against Trump, the coronation of Harris as the party heir breathed new hope into Democrats along with a flood of cash. They raised more than $1 billion, according to the campaign.
Despite the funding and new enthusiasm among Democrats, the swing states of Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin ultimately went to Trump, giving him a clear path to the White House with 292 Electoral College votes out of 270 needed to win the White House, to her 224 votes, according to The Associated Press.
–Ariana Figueroa, Florida Phoenix
BOB says
BS how do they know?
Skibum says
All day today there has been one armchair analysis after another seeking to critique the VP’s election campaign strategy, giving their individual takes on the so-called “mistakes” she made that ended in her defeat to drumph. As was predictable, some even suggest, after the fact of course, that Kamala Harris should have seen this coming and ran with this or that different strategy that is so easily identifiable… after all is said and done. Isn’t 20-20 hindsight wonderful! My take on it is that she was basically thrust into the position of running an election campaign at almost the last minute. I think it is remarkable that she was able to ramp up an enormous team of mostly volunteers for her multi-state ground game, and accomplished what she did in the very limited couple of months between the time she announced her candidacy and the November election. Not least of which was the extraordinary, hundreds of millions of campaign donations she was able to bring in during that very narrow time span. All in all, Kamala Harris and her team accomplished a monumental task, and I think they did the best they could under the circumstances. Pundits will inevitably critique and criticize the loser’s campaign as if they knew all along what was going wrong, because that is just how things work in today’s environment, not that any of them could have performed even half as good if all of the strategizing and decision making had been left up to them. And lastly, I hope, despite all of the disappointment that she and her running mate are not going to be the ones at the helm of government come the new year, we cannot be so despondent that we give up on our ideals. We cannot stop working toward making progress for our country. It is up to the younger people to continue the fight for what they believe in, and I for one am glad for all of the people that Kamala Harris and Mike Walz have encouraged and inspired to do so on our behalf.
The People says
1 Billion $ donated for that woman who stammers to a frozen standstill if her teleprompter fails. Why Couldn’t we support RFK or ANYONE else?
Democrats own this Trump victory due to their lousy decision making from Obama down to Pelosi, Clintons, down to Schiff, Schummer, Watters down to the lowest of the low AOC and her “squad”. The people said “no more”. Let ME be clear. They have the trifecta (House, senate and executive branch) AND a majority in the highest court. And there’s absolutely nobody to blame but themselves.
JW says
Something is rotten in the State of America.
There is an increasing cult of ignorance in our Disunited States of America, now reinforced by artificial intelligence.
Anti-intellectualism is becoming a constant thread through our political and cultural life.
It is nurtured by a false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
Let’s not forget that the difference between human beings and animals is our ability to think and compromise with one another.
Let’s not go backwards to where we came from but find peaceful ways forward as our evolution continues.
It is all a question of EDUCATION or lack there-of.
Otherwise we will self-create the end of our own human existence.
The world is watching!
Lil bird says
To clarify, there is not (and was never) a “right to an abortion” in the US Constitution. Roe v Wade was a Supreme Court case whose judicial interpretation of the 14th amendment privacy clause recently got overturned and thus jurisdiction for the arguments presented in the case resorted back to the States. This means the States could again regulate as they choose- same as they had for hundreds of years before Roe v Wade. The US Constitution never changed nor was there ever a constitutional amendment at the federal level creating abortion with or without regulations as a federal right.
Amendment 4 as proposed in 2024 for changes to FL state constitution also did not pass.
Atwp says
Democrats keep crying, and feeling sad. Ask the question what went wrong? Next week start making plans to win the small ignored elections. Make plans to take the house in 2026. Trump will implode. Get ready for another victory, we did it in 2020, why not the next four years. We will win. This country isn’t. ready for a female leader, especially a woman of color. The country elected a convicted lying crook. Democrats, the burden is on the Republicans shoulders to deliver what he promised to the people. We need to get ready for the next fight.