Harris formally concedes one day after Trump's sweeping victory
WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris, in her first public comments since losing the 2024 White House race to former President Trump, urged supporters to "accept the results."
But Harris on Wednesday afternoon emphasized that "while I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign."
The vice president spoke at Howard University, her alma mater, where her campaign held a large election night watch party. Harris never addressed the crowd on Tuesday night, as initial optimism about the election turned dour as the clock struck past midnight.
Trump ended up winning a sweeping electoral and popular vote victory over Harris, as Republicans won back the Senate for the first time in four years. Meanwhile, control of the House was still up for grabs on the day after the election.
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The vice president, who walked to the podium one last time to Beyonce's "Freedom," the song that had become Harris' unofficial anthem, noted near the top of her roughly 12-minute address that "my heart is full today."
"The outcome of this election is not what we hoped, not what we fought, not what we voted for," she said. "But hear when I say… the light of America’s promise will always burn bright as long as we never give up and as long as we keep fighting."
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The vice president also seemed to take aim at Trump, who for four years has blamed his 2020 White House loss to President Biden on unproven claims of a "rigged election" and who repeatedly tried unsuccessfully to overturn the results.
"Earlier today I spoke with President-elect Trump and congratulated him on his victory," Harris said. "I also told him we will help him and his team with their transition and that we will engage in a peaceful transfer of power."
She emphasized that "a fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results… anyone who seeks the public trust must honor it."
The vice president also stressed that "we owe loyalty not to a president or a party but to the Constitution of the United States."
Harris, a former San Francisco district attorney, California attorney general and U.S. senator, ran unsuccessfully for the 2020 presidential nomination. But Biden named his primary rival as his running mate and the two have spent the past four years steering the nation.
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Harris, for most of the 2024 election cycle, was the dutiful running mate as Biden bid for a second four-year term in the White House.
But everything changed in late June, due to Biden's disastrous debate performance against Trump.
The 81-year-old Biden's halting and stumbling delivery fueled questions about his physical and mental ability to serve another four years in the White House. And it sparked calls from within the Democratic Party for Biden to drop out of the White House race.
The president finally succumbed to the pressure and on July 21, in a blockbuster announcement that rocked the 2024 election, Biden ended his bid and endorsed his vice president.
The Democratic Party quickly coalesced around Harris, who instantly enjoyed a jump in the polls and a massive surge in fundraising.
The Harris honeymoon continued through the late August Democratic National Convention and into September, when most pundits declared her the winner of the one and only presidential debate between her and Trump.
But as the calendar moved from September into October, Trump appeared to regain his footing, and public opinion surveys indicated the former president gaining momentum.
Then, in the final days of the campaign, the mood and the vibe appeared to switch again, this time to Harris, who closed out her White House bid on a positive note and didn't mention Trump's name during the last 48 hours leading up to Election Day.
Meanwhile, Trump struck a more negative and angrier tone on the campaign trail as he crisscrossed the key battleground states in the stretch run.
Harris, in her concession speech on Wednesday, appeared to paint a contrast with Trump.
"I am so proud of the race we ran and the way we ran … over the 107 days of this campaign," Harris said. "We have been intentional about building community and building coalitions, bringing people together."
But the former president ended up with a sweeping victory, as Americans returned him to the White House.
Preliminary data from the Fox News Voter Analysis of the 2024 election pointed to a political realignment, as it spotlighted that Trump ran up the score with his MAGA base while narrowing traditional Democratic advantages among Black, Hispanic and young voters.
Harris came close in her bid to become the first woman elected to the presidency, but was unable to make enough gains in the ideological middle of the electorate to offset defections among groups that traditionally vote Democratic.
The Fox News Voter Analysis is a survey of more than 110,000 voters nationwide which highlights the 2024 campaign’s key dynamics.
Just as damaging: Harris wasn't able to escape the massive unpopularity of the Biden/Harris administration, where polls indicated that nearly three quarters of voters said the country was on the wrong track.
The Fox News Voter Analysis spotlighted that in an election where voters across the nation wanted change, they chose Trump’s outsider appeal over Harris’ promise to "turn the page" on the Trump era.
Fox News' Dana Blanton and Victoria Balara contributed to this report