Kamala concedes at Howard

Washington, DC

Vice President Kamala Harris finally took the stage at her alma mater, Washington, DC’s Howard University — a day later than anticipated, to deliver a twelve-minute concession speech.

She walked out at 4:24 p.m. ET Wednesday, somewhat ironically, to the chorus of Beyoncé’s “Freedom”:

Freedom, freedom, I can’t lose
Freedom I can’t lose

“The outcome of this election is not what we wanted, not what we fought for, not what we voted for — but hear me when I say that the light of America’s promise will always burn bright as long as we never give up and as long as we keep fighting,” Harris said.

“I am so proud of the race we ran and the way we ran it,” Harris said. “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 this transition and that we will engage in a peaceful transition of power.”

The vice president did however strike a defiant note in her remarks.

“While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign,” she said. “This is not a time to throw up our hands — this is a time to roll up our sleeves.”

The university’s quad was set to be the scene for her election night speech yesterday, before thousands of students from America’s oldest HBCU. But it became apparent at around midnight that she would not be addressing the masses — attendees had started peeling off in droves an hour before, to get some rest before the following day’s classes.

There had been a real festival atmosphere at Howard earlier on in the night. Thousands of students were standing or sitting in the quad. OutKast, Missy Elliott and Beyoncé blasted from slightly tinny speaker stacks; all-age sororities took part in coordinated dance lines; on the riders, the zoomers were all glued to their phones. What there wasn’t, conspicuously at least, was a monitor displaying the results as they came in, at first. Was the plan to carry Kamala to victory on vibes in the face of… votes?

There were big boos from the crowd when they finally got CNN on the screens, just as the network called Texas and a number of other states for Trump. This was followed by a lot of screaming as they showed leads for Kamala in Pennsylvania and Michigan. Alas, it didn’t last.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom, however. There were some cheers from the Howard crowd on Tuesday night for the US Senate victories of Angela Alsobrooks in Maryland and Lisa Blunt Rochester in Delaware, the first African-American women to hold those offices. This was swiftly followed by exasperation as enfants terrible Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley held their Senate seats in Texas and Missouri respectively.

“I can feel the anxiety in the crowd,” Abby Phillip said on CNN a little later, up on the press rider as they cheered behind her. Yes Abby, it’s a college campus.

Nineteen-year-old Madison Lyman is a freshman here voting in her first presidential election. She’s from Kansas City, Missouri, but cast her ballot in DC. “It’s exciting to be a part of history and see Kamala Harris embrace such an important part of her personhood on the world stage,” she told The Spectator at around 10 p.m. ET. “I pray that she wins.”

Her friend, eighteen-year-old Matilda Molokela, is an economics major from South Africa. While she’s not eligible to vote, she did have some thoughts about her countryman Elon Musk. “He’s chronically unserious,” she said. “There’s so much else he could be doing with his money… especially in South Africa.”

The Democrats now have many questions to pose themselves as a party: should Biden have announced he’d be a one-term president in 2023? Should we have had a primary process then — or in July after he stepped down? Should Harris have done more media earlier on? And should she have made a bigger deal of what she was actually running on and the departures she planned to make from Biden administration policy? Perhaps the biggest of all: “how did we blow it?”