Kamala Harris’s favourite spot when she studied at Howard University in the 1980s was a large, grass-covered area in the middle of campus called the Yard. She would stand there and watch the musicians playing instruments and the medics leaving the lab, the students laughing together. “That was the beauty of Howard,” she wrote in her memoir. “Every signal told students that we could be anything – we were young, gifted, and black – and we shouldn’t let anything get in the way of our success.” Forty years later, the Yard was where Harris hoped to declare her ascension to the American presidency.
But it was not to be. There, yesterday afternoon (6 November), in front of a small crowd of supporters, staffers and Howard students, she conceded defeat. Her uplifting tone was unbowed. She delivered a message of defiant hope. “My heart is full today – full of gratitude for the trust you have placed in me, full of love for our country and full of resolve,” she said. She sought to inspire her supporters to continue the fight against the type of politics which Trump represents, a politics she left undefined. “While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fuelled this campaign – the fight for freedom,” she said. “Don’t ever stop trying to make the world a better place. You have power. You have power.”
It was surreal. Her positivity created the impression that Harris hadn’t really lost, that the entire reason for everyone being there was not now redundant, that the Republicans hadn’t (almost certainly) won the popular vote for the first time since 2004. She had no contrition for the loss, nor did she try to wrestle with the reasons behind her defeat. The message was the opposite: keep calm and carry on, stay the course, keep going. She spoke as if nothing had gone wrong and the strategy had delivered. Her finale was characteristic of her campaign: “I know many people feel like we are entering a dark time, but for the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case. But America, if it is, let us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion of stars.” It was at this point that people around me started giggling.
Minutes before Harris mounted the stage, a statement from Senator Bernie Sanders began pinging onto attendees’ phones. It was a stinging rebuke of everything she was about to say. It read: “It should come as no surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them… While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right,” he said. “Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign?… Probably not.”
This was a furious indictment of the Democratic Party. It echoed David Axelrod’s comment on CNN that the party treated the working class like “natives” who needed to be civilised. Despite his opposition to the administration’s supplying of weapons to Israel, Sanders endorsed Harris. But his statement yesterday marked the first shot in the fight over why the party lost, the conclusion of which will dictate its direction over the next four years. Dissenters are already criticising Harris for cosying up to Republicans like Liz Cheney, for diluting Biden’s economic populism and for relying on shallow and incoherent messaging. Expect a reckoning on Gaza, while some quiet voices are raising concerns about the party’s failure to stop illegal migrant crossings.
On the opposite side, Harris’s staffers are already briefing that the blame should fall on Joe Biden’s refusal to stand down in good time. But the Democrats are in trouble if the focus remains on the timing of Biden’s exit. If Harris had more time, would she have won? Isn’t there a risk that the more the public got to know her, the worse the result would have been?
Her concession speech was a sign that the party elite will plough on as before, unreflective about the distance between themselves and large swathes of the electorate. After the crowds started streaming out of the gates back towards the centre of Washington, one man cheerily remarked to a friend, “you know, I remember that Hillary also gave an awesome concession speech in 2016”.