* Kamala was thrown into the 2024 presidential race under chaotic conditions, but took on the challenge with determination -- quickly building up public enthusiasm, selecting Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as a running mate, and then accepting the Democratic presidential nomination in August. From then to November, the pace of campaigning was intense, with polls showing a dead heat; to finally result in disappointment on election night.
* The Kamala campaign team was a composite of Joe's team and her own, her notable additions including Maya and Maya's husband Tony West. As mentioned, there had long been some tensions between the presidential and vice presidential teams, but the new campaign team was described as a "friendly merger", not a "hostile takeover". On 22 July, Kamala told the team that it was her intention to go out and earn this nomination and win -- looking back on her service as a prosecutor and California's attorney general to say:
QUOTE:
In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds. Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say: I know Donald Trump's type.
END_QUOTE
Congressional Democrats -- including Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and former Speaker and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi -- quickly endorsed her, as did Barack Obama and even Jimmy Carter. Carter was then pushing 100 years old, saying that he wanted to hang on to be able to vote for Kamala. She was also endorsed by former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former House Representative Liz Cheney.
Public enthusiasm for Kamala swelled, with her #KHive following in resurgence, and her "you just fell out of a coconut tree" meme getting wide circulation -- some fans saying they were "coconut-pilled", and using a coconut emoji on social media postings. In response to those who wanted somebody else as the candidate, Kamala's backers replied, that an alternative candidate "can't just fall out of a coconut tree."
She also became known for wearing classic Converse sneakers, and of course for her Shyamala laugh. Inevitably, all these things were thrown back at her by far-Right trolls, who could not contain their anger at a "bLaCk W0mAn" running for president.
Of course, Kamala still had White House duties to attend to. On 25 July, she had a conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in her office. She started out by reassuring him that she supported Israel and the Israeli need for security, but that the American public was seeing what was happening in Gaza, and it wasn't going down well. Kamala told him: "I'm disturbed by the humanitarian situation in Gaza -- it's unconscionable. People are starving. Sanitation conditions are intolerable. 4,000 people per toilet in western Gaza."
Netanyahu shrugged off the sanitation problem, saying: "I've given orders to deal with that." He then told her a bland double lie: "There is no starvation in Gaza, and definitely there is no policy of starving people." Kamala didn't buy that for an instant: she knew the Israelis had given Joe Biden reassurances, then gone on to do whatever they felt like doing. The conversation somehow remained cordial, with Kamala pressing the White House message on Netanyahu, who played at being agreeable -- but the nightmare in Gaza was not about to end.
After the talk, Kamala spoke to reporters, speaking of the agonizing ...
QUOTE [EXCERPTS]:
... images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third, or fourth time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering, and I will not be silent.
To everyone who has been calling for a ceasefire and to everyone who yearns for peace, I see you and I hear you. Let's get the deal done.
END_QUOTE
Netanyahu, after leaving the White House, went to Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where Trump was much more sympathetic than Kamala. Netanyahu was reportedly outraged at Kamala's remarks about "dead children" and the like.
The Gaza crisis would dog Kamala all through the campaign, with protesters chanting the likes of: "KAMALA, KAMALA, YOU CAN'T HIDE! WE WON"T VOTE FOR GENOCIDE!" She wondered: Why weren't they protesting at Trump rallies? If Trump won, there was no hope for a just peace, a two-state solution. To be sure, Joe and then Kamala had visible ownership of the unsatisfactory situation, while Trump did not, and so the attacks were unsurprising. However, although the protesters were generally sincere, anybody in the online world could see an organized troll campaign making intensive use of the Gaza crisis to discredit Kamala. That troll campaign would persist well after the election.
BACK_TO_TOP* As Kamala ramped up her campaign, she was narrowing down vice-presidential candidates. One prominent early contender was Pete Buttigieg, Biden's Transportation Secretary, who was notably smart, articulate, and charismatic. He was also prominently gay, with a same-sex marriage; that wasn't a problem in itself, but Kamala felt that it would narrow the possible voter base to offer a black woman as president -- who was also married to a Jewish man -- and a gay man as vice president.
With so much at stake, it was too much to risk. The field was gradually narrowed down to three straight white males: Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly -- previously a Navy captain and combat pilot, as well as an astronaut. They were all highly qualified, and choosing among them was difficult.
Of course, Trump remained an obnoxious background presence while the campaign work went on. On 31 July, Trump was speaking to an association of black journalists in Chicago, when he was asked if he agreed with some Congressional Republicans who thought Kamala was a "DEI hire", meaning only in her position because of her race. As could be expected, Trump responded with an offensive troll:
QUOTE:
She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn black, and now she wants to be known as black. So I don't know, is she Indian or is she black? I respect either one, but she obviously doesn't, because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she went -- she became a black person.
END_QUOTE
It quickly got to Kamala, with an advisor, Brian Fallon, suggesting she give a serious speech to establish her racial identity. Kamala didn't like that idea at all, later writing:
QUOTE:
"Are you f###ing kidding me?" I was not about to take Trump's bait. He lies all the time, I told Brian. He throws out outrageous statements to distract from the real issues. "Today he wants me to prove my race. What next? He'll say I'm not a woman and I'll need to show my vagina?"
END_QUOTE
Later that day, Kamala told a gathering of black sorority sisters in Houston that Trump's comments were "the same old show, the divisiveness and the disrespect."
A few days later, it was Doug's turn to be baited, after Laura Loomer -- a well-known far-Right online troll, close to Trump -- discovered the affair that had ended Doug's first marriage, forcing him to publicly acknowledge it. His ex-wife Kersten went public in support, with the fact that she had been forced to do it outraging Kamala; Doug could expect to be attacked in public, but Kersten hadn't signed up for the abuse. Not incidentally, Ella Emhoff was widely abused online by far-Right trolls, who competed to devise ever nastier insults. Not too surprisingly, they said little about Cole Emhoff, trolls preferring to single out women.
BACK_TO_TOP* Kamala became the formal presidential nominee on 5 August, after a virtual roll call vote, and selected Tim Walz as her running mate. Shapiro and Kelly would have been good choices, but Walz seemed like the best complement to Kamala, being a direct and totally level-headed Midwesterner in a classic populist progressive mould -- almost a stereotype of Middle America, having been a high-school football coach and an Army National Guard senior NCO. Kamala's people had leaned towards Walz in particular because he showed no interest in being a rival to her, with Maya saying: "He's loyal, he'll have your back on the trail, and it's clear you like him." Walz was all-American, very easy to like.
On 22 August, Kamala publicly accepted her nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, saying:
QUOTE [EXCERPTS]:
I accept your nomination for President of the United States of America. With this election, our nation has a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism, and divisive battles of the past -- a chance to chart a new way forward, not as members of any one party or faction, but as Americans.
I promise to be a President for all Americans. You can always trust me to put country above party and self, to hold sacred America's fundamental principles: from the rule of law, to free and fair elections, to the peaceful transfer of power. I will be a President who unites us around our highest aspirations; a President who leads and listens, who is realistic, practical, and has common sense, and always fights for the American people.
Fellow Americans, this election is not only the most important of our lives; it is one of the most important in the life of our nation. In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man -- but the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.
Consider not only the chaos and calamity when he was in office, but also the gravity of what has happened since he lost the last election. Donald Trump tried to throw away your votes; when he failed, he sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol, where they assaulted law enforcement officers. When politicians in his own party begged him to call off the mob and send help, he did the opposite; he fanned the flames. And now, for an entirely different set of crimes, he was found guilty of fraud by a jury of everyday Americans. And separately, found liable for committing sexual abuse.
And consider what he intends to do if we give him power again. Consider his explicit intent to set free the violent extremists who assaulted those law enforcement officers at the Capitol; his explicit intent to jail journalists, political opponents, anyone he sees as the enemy; his explicit intent to deploy our active-duty military against our own citizens.
How he would use the immense powers of the presidency of the United States -- not to improve your life, not to strengthen our national security, but to serve the only client he has ever had: himself. And we know what a second Trump term would look like: ... its sum total is to pull our country back into the past. But America, we are not going back.
END_QUOTE
At the end of the speech, the crowd went wild, cheering; Doug came up and embraced her -- with Tim Walz and his wife Gwen also coming onstage, the four joining hands.
It was an exultant moment, but there was no time to waste. The election campaign was already in rapid movement and would only become more intense.
BACK_TO_TOP* The campaign platform was largely what could have been predicted: reproductive and LGBTQ rights, gun safety laws, dealing with climate change, strengthening voting rights and the Affordable Care Act, raising the minimum wage, and providing Federal support for low-cost housing. Kamala proposed raising taxes on the very rich and corporations to fund services for the lower and middle classes, as well as to reduce the deficit. THE NEW YORK TIMES described the proposed economic policy as embodying "the idea that the Federal government must act aggressively to foster competition and correct distortions in private markets."
The platform was somewhat to the Left of Joe's in supporting "price-gouging laws" to clamp down on extreme price increases; it also called for caps on prescription drug costs and expansion of the child tax credit. In addition, the platform supported term limits on Supreme Court justices. The number of Border Patrol agents would be increased, while the immigration system would be reformed, with paths provided to citizenship.
Internationally, the USA would continue to support Ukraine and Israel in their conflicts -- with the stipulation that the Israel would work towards a cease-fire, hostage deal, and a plan for a two-state solution. The US would continue to be a strong NATO member, and maintain a balance between cooperation and confrontation with China. Kamala described her campaign as "a choice between freedom and chaos".
Her campaign seemed to be picking up steam, particularly with contributions flowing in at a rapid pace, while rallies were packed and enthusiastic. She got a particularly useful endorsement from pop singer Taylor Swift, who had a strong online following. Other celebrities, including Bruce Springsteen, Beyonce, Kelly Rowland, and Cardi B lent a hand.
* After intensive and exhausting preparation, Kamala conducted a debate with Trump on 10 September. There had been some discussion on the debate rules -- one issue being the rule that a debater's mike would be muted when it wasn't that debater's turn to speak, which had been implemented after the persistent interruptions in the 2020 presidential debate. Kamala didn't want the mikes muted because she thought she could deal with Trump's interruptions, and use them against him. However, Trump's own team understood that open mikes would not be in Trump's interests, and managed to convince him to stay with muted mikes.
At the outset of the debate Kamala took the offensive, smiting Trump for his mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and his criminal trials; then zeroing in on the core of Trump's campaign, saying he was using the issue of race to "divide the American people". He waffled on his comments on Kamala "not being black".
Trump sniped back at Kamala over inflation and immigration -- but then followed up on reports circulating in far Right media that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing pets and making meals of them. "They're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats, they're eating the pets of the people that live there." City officials had denied the reports. Kamala just laughed at him: "Talk about extreme!"
The discussion moved on to reproductive rights, with Kamala firing at Trump: "One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government -- and Donald Trump, certainly -- should not be telling a woman what to do with her body."
Trump replied that he supported abortions in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is at risk -- that is, the most restrictive position possible short of a total ban, placing the mother in the impractical position of having to legally prove she needed an abortion, to physicians in fear of prosecution. Trump went on to recycle the tale of "after-birth abortions" -- a preposterous story popular with the far Right, with a moderator telling Trump: "There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born."
As far as health care went, Trump said he had "concepts of a plan" that would be "something that's better" -- which was effectively what he had said during his 2016 campaign, and nothing had happened in the four years of his first term. The two then sparred inconclusively on the economy, with Trump going on to say: "She has a plan to defund the police. She has a plan to confiscate everyone's guns." Kamala replied that both she and Tim Walz were gun owners, and that she wasn't after a ban, she just wanted sensible gun-safety laws.
Since Trump had done nothing but lie through the debate, it was no surprise that public analysis declared Kamala the winner. However, polls suggested a close race between the two candidates -- which seemed hard to believe, given Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election and his massive legal troubles. What sensible person would vote for him? Nonetheless, the Kamala campaign kept saying it would be close.
* There was another attempt to assassinate Trump on 15 September, when a sniper staked out the Trump golf course in West Palm Beach Florida, lying in wait in the bushes beyond the golf course fence. The sniper never got off a shot, being finally detected by the Secret Service and taken under fire himself; he fled and was later captured. The assassination attempt was lame and didn't attract much attention, but on 17 September, Kamala phoned Trump to "check how he was". Trump said he was okay, and hoped nothing like it happened to Kamala -- then became effusive, laying on the schmooze:
QUOTE [EXCERPTS]:
"It's very nice that you called, and I appreciate it. You've done a great job, you really have. You've done a very, very good job ... my only problem is it makes it very hard for me to be angry at you."
This man who had called me dumb, lazy, crazy, and mentally impaired. Implied that I drank and took drugs. Said I was a Marxist, a fascist. People had told me that he had the capacity, one on one, to show a warmer side. That he could even be charming. I hadn't believed it. But now I was experiencing it. And then, a reality check: He's a con man. He's really good at it.
I'd readied myself for a phone conversation with Mr. Hyde, but Dr. Jekyll had picked up the call.
END_QUOTE
Trump's warmth was superficial; the man had no empathy, his relations with others being strictly transactional, when he wasn't exploitative. Kamala would continue to be the target of Trump's stream of mean-spirited, often incoherent trash talk. There had never been any real intelligence in Trump, just a dedicated low cunning -- and old age was catching up to him, with the low cunning in decline and the incoherence taking over.
BACK_TO_TOP* Kamala was in Philadelphia on the day she made that call, talking with a panel of black journalists there, with the Gaza crisis inevitably being brought up. It was inescapable, with public agitation running hot and loud public demonstrations getting a lot of attention in the news media -- while online trolls used the issue to discredit her. She had a consistent message in response, telling the black journalists her policy in the matter:
QUOTE:
That there be no reoccupation of Gaza, that there be no changing of the territorial lines in Gaza, that there be an ability to have security in the region for all concerned in a way that creates stability ... We need to get this deal done and we need to get it done immediately -- and that is my position and that is my policy.
END_QUOTE
She had been saying and would continue to say much the same thing over and over -- with the message generally ignored, as was the reality that Trump was absolutely not a friend of the Palestinian people.
Less significantly Trump, who would never pass up any cheap shot, even went so far as to snipe at Kamala's claim that she had worked at a McDonald's when she was a college student. Kamala didn't ignore that jeer, instead using it in an interview with MSNBC on 25 September to point to how out-of-touch Trump was with Americans:
QUOTE:
Part of the reason I even talk about having worked at McDonald's is because there are people who work at McDonald's in our country who are trying to raise a family. I worked there as a student.
I think part of the difference between me and my opponent includes our perspective on the needs of the American people and what our responsibility, then, is to meet those needs.
END_QUOTE
It was Trump being obnoxious; it amounted to nothing. On 1 October, Tim Walz had a debate with JD Vance, Trump's vice-presidential pick. Vance was notoriously nasty and dishonest -- but he chose to be on his good behavior in the debate, knowing that taking the low road would not be in his advantage while Walz kept on the high road. Walz stumbled a bit in the debate, but it didn't matter; the polls weren't affected one way or another.
On 3 October, Kamala was joined by Liz Cheney -- earlier a prominent Republican representative, regarded as a hardline conservative who was also a steadfast enemy of Trump. They spoke together in Ripon, Wisconsin, where the Republican Party had been founded in 1854, Cheney said:
QUOTE [EXCERPTS]:
What January 6 showed us is there is not an ounce of compassion in Donald Trump. He is petty, he is vindictive, and he is cruel. And Donald Trump is not fit to lead this great nation.
Vice President Harris is standing in the breach at a critical moment in our nation's history. She is working to unite reasonable people from all across the political spectrum. I know that she loves our country and I know that she will be a president for all Americans.
END_QUOTE
Other "Never Trump" conservatives endorsed the Kamala campaign. The team-up between the two women made perfect sense, Kamala feeling a reasonable need to reach out to conservatives -- but it was, like the Vance-Walz debate, inconsequential, since the "Never Trumpers" had no following. Some of the hard Left complained about Kamala being chummy with Liz Cheney, but that didn't amount to anything either; it was just another thing to complain about.
There was definitely momentum behind the Kamala campaign; by October Harris' campaign had raised over $1 billion USD. In fact, there was so much money coming in that the Kamala campaign started to downplay the amount of it, lest contributions dry up. However, the going inevitably got rougher as election day approached.
In October, Kamala conducted a series of interviews with news media. On the 6th, she was interviewed by the CBS News for the well-known 60 MINUTES program. The interview went well, but it was lengthy, and of course edited down for release. On the basis of the edits, Trump sued CBS for $20 billion USD; it was a frivolous lawsuit, but CBS would later settle it for $16 million USD, that being cheaper than fighting it.
On the 7th, Kamala was interviewed on ABC's THE VIEW program. The interview went well enough, until Kamala was asked: "If anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?"
Kamala had prepped for the question and had careful answers for it, but at the time she felt like she was being asked to belittle Joe Biden. Kamala replied: "There is not a thing that comes to mind." Her campaign team despaired at that answer, knowing how low Joe's approval ratings were, and the Trump campaign loudly echoed Kamala's response. More damagingly, both the LOS ANGELES TIMES and the WASHINGTON POST, at the direction of their billionaire owners, refused to endorse anyone for president. The legacy media was not blatantly hostile to Kamala, but as a rule it was not at all supportive either.
From mid-October, the Trump campaign hit very low and hard even by their standards, releasing ads attacking Kamala for her support of the rights of transgender Americans -- the ad saying: "Harris is for THEY/THEM, Trump is for YOU!" First and foremost, Trump was about bigotry, that being his only real selling point to the general public. Attacks on transfolk from the far Right had been ramping up for a number of years as an exercise in bullying an easily victimized minority -- with attacks on transgender women playing on female sports teams, and protests against government support for gender-affirming medical care. As Kamala wrote:
QUOTE:
Transgender people are Americans, with the same rights we all have, to liberty, equality, the pursuit of happiness, and equal protection under the law. There aren't very many. A tiny minority of less than 1 percent of the population. Of these, in 2024, less than ten played on women's college sports teams. Less than ten.
The law says incarcerated people must be provided with medical care. Under that law, two federal prisoners have received court-ordered gender-affirmation surgery. Two. Very small numbers.
But here are some bigger ones: Three hundred and fifty transgender people were murdered in America in 2024. Fifteen of them were kids. Trans people are over four times as likely as other Americans to be victims of a violent crime. Almost half -- 42% -- have attempted suicide.
END_QUOTE
Kamala had long supported the LGBTQ community. Twenty years earlier, the far Right had attacked same-sex marriage as a "wedge" issue; they couldn't do that any more, so they attacked transfolk instead.
QUOTE [EXCERPTS]:
When Republicans lied about this tiny, vulnerable group with fear campaigns about schoolkids being taken away for gender surgery without parents' knowledge, I knew that Trump's increasingly hateful rhetoric was painting a bull's-eye on their backs and putting them in peril.
When the ACLU, in 2019, asked me to fill out a questionnaire, and one of the questions was about gender health care for incarcerated adults, I said I supported whatever was medically necessary. (Which is what the law says and what Donald Trump upheld as president. During his term, trans people in federal prison received the hormone treatments they were seeking.)
The ad also said that I supported "biological men competing against our girls in their sports. That's not my position. I agree with the concerns expressed by parents and players that we have to take into account biological factors such as muscle mass and unfair athletic advantage when we determine who plays on which teams, especially in contact sports. With goodwill and common sense, I believe we can come up with ways to do this, without vilifying and demonizing children.
I wish I could have gotten the message across that there isn't a distinction between "they/them" and "you". The pronoun that matters is "we". We the people. And that's who I am for.
END_QUOTE
The controversy over transgender rights was completely manufactured; transfolk did not represent a threat to society, and they were entitled to the same rights as others. The Kamala campaign did work to rebut the claims, but the main focus of the campaign remained on more substantial issues. It seemed unlikely that anyone who would consider voting for Kamala took the ad seriously.
BACK_TO_TOP* On 16 October, Kamala was interviewed by Bret Baier of Fox News. She was expecting the interview to be combative; it was, with Baier running down the Trump playlist, continuously interrupting Kamala, though she held her own. The only good reason for her to be there was to highlight how Trump refused to be interviewed by media outlets that he saw as unfriendly. It was unlikely that Kamala swayed any of the Fox audience.
Of course, from that time on, the contest only became even more combative, particularly once billionaire Elon Musk -- at the time, the world's richest man -- came to the front, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to boost Trump. Musk drove attack ads on Kamala, hired door-to-door promotional campaigns, and set up a dodgy "million-dollar sweepstakes" that looked suspiciously like vote-buying.
The race became ever more intense and exhausting. Three days before the election, it was impossible to call:
QUOTE:
Most polls showed us still stuck in a virtual dead heat. In six of the seven swing states, polls had Trump and me within a point of each other, me with the slightest of advantages in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan; Trump with a similar razor-thin margin in Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina. He was up 3 points in Arizona. THE NEW YORK TIMES' chief political analyst, Nate Cohn, said it was "one of the tightest races in the history of American politics."
I wasn't leaving a thing to chance. I would visit five states in twenty-four hours. Meanwhile, in Oregon, ballot drop boxes had been set on fire and the National Guard put on standby, as it had been in Washington and Nevada, as a precaution against election unrest. In Washington, DC, police were on alert.
END_QUOTE
On 2 November, with the election looming, Kamala got a spot on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, in a mirror meeting with Maya Rudolph. Both women were in good form, and the skit was a winner.
When election day came around, Kamala was feeling confident: the signs were mixed enough to give her good reasons for optimism, and besides -- would Americans really prefer a senile, bigoted criminal as president? Sensible people found it hard to believe. Unfortunately, as the day went on, the news got worse -- and after the polls closed and the counts were tallied up one by one, the window slowly slid shut. Nobody was able to sleep, of course, and it was late when Kamala got a call from her campaign chair, Jen O'Malley Dillon, who told her:
QUOTE:
"I'm sorry, ma'am. I don't think you're going to get there."
"Oh my God. What's going to happen to our country?" I could barely breathe. "Should we fight this?"
"We're just not in the zone to ask."
I walked down the stairs in shock. ... All I could do was repeat, over and over, "My God, my God, what will happen to our country?"
END_QUOTE
There was the possibility that Trump had rigged the vote: he always cheated, so that was easy to believe. However, Trump was blatant in his cheating, and elections are always closely monitored; it's not easy to cheat without being caught. Kamala had the services of Marc Elias, one of America's most prominent election lawyers, who told her that "nothing actionable" had happened.
She got a few hours' sleep, then called up Trump to concede, and promised to help in the transition of power. Trump chose to be gracious in reply. Speaking at Howard later in the day, a haggard Kamala publicly acknowledged the loss, proclaiming the vote was fair:
QUOTE [EXCERPTS]:
I am so proud of the race we ran and the way we ran it -- and the way we ran it. Over the 107 days of this campaign, we have been intentional about building community and building coalitions, bringing people together from every walk of life and background, united by love of country, with enthusiasm and joy in our fight for America's future.
I know folks are feeling and experiencing a range of emotions right now ... but we must accept the results of this election. Earlier today, I spoke with President-elect Trump and congratulated him on his victory. I also told him that we will help him and his team with their transition and that we will engage in a peaceful transfer of power.
A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results ... 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, and loyalty to our conscience and to our God. My allegiance to all three is why I am here to say, while I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fuels this campaign, the fight for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness and the dignity of all people, a fight for the ideals at the heart of our nation, the ideals that reflect America at our best.
I will never give up the fight for a future where Americans can pursue their dreams, ambitions and aspirations, where the women of America have the freedom to make decisions about their own body and not have their government telling them what to do. We will never give up the fight to protect our schools and our streets from gun violence.
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 ... Let us fill the sky with the light of a billion brilliant stars, the light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service.
END_QUOTE
Originally, staffers had included comments about Trump, but Kamala told them to take them out: "It feels bitter." The election was over, the task at hand was to uplift the people who had worked so hard for her, and there was nothing useful to say about Trump in that circumstance.
Explanations were offered as to why Kamala lost, much of the talk focusing on public dissatisfaction with "Bidenomics" -- even though, by election time, the US economy was booming, with all economic indicators in the right direction and the USA leading the world. However, the public was still in the shadow of the difficulties of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Trump-driven propaganda helped perpetuate a false public impression of a sick economy, called a "vibecession", as opposed to a recession.
Agitation over the Gaza crisis depressed the vote for Kamala; to no surprise, after the election, coverage of agitation over Gaza faded. On the other side of the coin, Trump's vote was boosted because his opponent was a black woman; the majority of white males voted against her, and strong Kamala voter groups, particularly black women, were not enough to compensate. The only saving grace was that it was a close election; Trump came in slightly under half the total vote, denying him a strong mandate.
On 17 December, Kamala gave a "farewell address" at Prince George's Community College in Maryland, telling her voters to keep the faith:
QUOTE [EXCERPTS]:
The story of America's progress when we have made progress, in many ways, is the story of people who stayed true to their ideals, even in the face of difficulty. The movements for civil rights, women's rights, workers' rights, the United States of America itself ... would never have come to be if people had given up their cause after a court case or a battle or an election did not go their way.
Over the past several weeks, since the election, I have received tens of thousands of letters from people across our nation, many of them young leaders, Americans from every walk of life, people of every age, race, faith and political party. These letters share a common theme. Yes, there is disappointment, but there is also resolve for the future.
As we then approach the end of this year, many people have come up to me telling me they feel tired -- maybe even resigned -- that they're not sure whether they have the strength, much less the desire, to stay in the fight. Let me be very clear: No one can walk away. No one can walk away.
We must stay in the fight, every one of us, including the fight for an economy that works, not just for those at the very top but for working people -- for all Americans. To fight to make sure everyone has a fair shot to pursue their ambitions. The fight for our ideals, including the equality among us, the freedoms to which we are entitled, the dignity that we possess and is possessed by every one of us. So we must stay in the fight because that is the responsibility, in my opinion, that comes with the privilege of being an American.
END_QUOTE
Before leaving Washington DC, on 6 January 2025 she had a final duty: to certify the election in front of Congress:
QUOTE:
I stood in front of the tall chair behind the dais, facing the full chamber of the Senate and the House. Each state read the number of electoral votes for Donald Trump and the number of votes for Kamala Harris. When they finished, I recited the necessary words.
"The state of the vote for the President of the United States as delivered to the President of the Senate is as follows: The whole number of the electors appointed to vote for President of the United States is 538. Within that whole number, the majority is 270. The votes for President of the United States are as follows. Donald J. Trump of the state of Florida has received 312 votes."
The Republican side of the room cheered. I waited, hands folded. When the applause subsided, I continued. "Kamala D. Harris of the state of California has received 226 votes."
It was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. I stood there and did my duty for democracy. And that day, democracy stood. As I finished speaking, both sides of the aisle rose and applauded, as one.
END_QUOTE
BACK_TO_TOP
