Here’s what you could have won, Kamala …
Vice President Kamala Harris certified her emphatic loss to President-elect Donald Trump on Monday, formally ending a whirlwind election cycle that saw Harris succeed President Biden mid-race, raise a whopping $1 billion in fewer than twelve weeks — yet ultimately flop in all seven vital swing states.
In a moment of cruel irony, Harris was addressed as “Madam President” during Monday’s joint session of Congress — as a nod to her status as president of the Senate, rather than any electoral success.
The vice president failed to carry Democrats over the finish line in 2024, with her party losing the Senate in addition to the White House and failing to retake the House from Republicans — even as her campaign and associated PAC spending neared an all-time record.
Harris, 60, won one fewer electoral vote than former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did in her own ill-fated attempt to win the White House eight years ago — as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin all broke the GOP’s way to give Trump, 78, a 312-226 Electoral College victory.
The veep’s electoral vote total was the smallest attained by any Democrat since Michael Dukakis, who could only get 111 votes in his 1988 defeat by George W. Bush.
The drama-free joint session lasted fewer than 30 minutes, with 434 House members and all 100 senators in attendance. Even Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), still recovering from a broken hip, was present as her successor as House Speaker, Mike Johnson (R-La.), presided over the chamber alongside Harris.
Four tellers — Sens. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) as well as Reps. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) and Joe Morelle (D-NY) — read the electoral results from each state into the congressional record while confirming they were “regular in form and authentic.”
Harris kept a poker face throughout — never diverting from her official script and pausing only at the conclusion of the session to thank the lawmakers.
Several Republicans and their supporters couldn’t help but engage in some schadenfreude.
“You certifying your own loss is the best birthday present one could ever wish for,” gloated the incoming president’s son Eric on X.
Vance, 40, was all smiles during the proceedings, pausing to chat with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and smiling for selfies with the class of the 119th Congress.
On a media sprint ahead of Nov. 5, Harris had boasted on CBS’ “The Late Show” that her opponent had been always been a “loser,” toasting her run while cracking open a Miller High Life with host Stephen Colbert
“You know, when you lost millions of jobs, you lost manufacturing, you lost automotive plants, you lost the election. What does that make you? A loser,” she said on Oct. 8. “This is what somebody at my rallies said. I thought it was funny.”
“It’s accurate. It’s accurate,” Colbert replied as the two laughed.
“This is what happens when I drink beer!” she bragged — indicating a high level of confidence about her electoral odds despite her internal campaign numbers never showing her ahead of the 45th president at any point in the campaign.
Trump also won the popular vote, 49.9% (77,301,997) to 48.4% (75,017,626), the first Republican to do so in 20 years — prompting congressional Republicans to declare their nominee had won a “mandate” in his upcoming term to remake Washington.
The GOP nominee bested his margins among his white rural and working-class base while making decades-high improvements for Republicans among ethnic minorities.
Despite murmurings of the incoming president’s criminal charges in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot potentially barring him from office under provisions of the 14th Amendment, no objections to the electoral count were offered Monday.
Democrats had challenged every Republican presidential victory since 2000 — a fact apparently lost on House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who declared on Friday: “There are no election deniers on our side of the aisle.”
Both Biden and Harris had during their stints at the top of the 2024 ticket called Trump a “convicted felon” and “fascist” — and the oldest-ever president even took a swipe at all of the Republican’s supporters in the final week of the race when he mocked them as “garbage.”
In the final days of the race, the president also hinted at the efforts of his Justice Department to convict Trump in connection with his attempts to remain in power after his 2020 election defeat as well as on charges of hoarding national security information at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
“If I said this five years ago, you’d lock me up: We gotta lock him up,” Biden said during a visit to a Democratic campaign office in New Hampshire — though he later welcomed Trump into the White House after his Nov. 5 win with a much warmer sentiment: “Welcome back.”
While trying to project a message of “joy,” Harris was unable to break away from Biden’s poor record on the economy, which saw inflation surge by more than 20% cumulatively, and immigration, as millions of migrants egressed with ease into the US over the four-year term.
She also failed to define herself on a host of other issues, post-election surveys showed, flip-flopping on her previous support for the elimination of fracking in the US, decriminalizing border crossings and more.
The certification process occurred in the shadow of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, when a mob of Trump’s supporters breached the US Capitol and halted the tally.
“The peaceful transfer of power is one of the most fundamental principles of American democracy. As much as any other principle, it is what distinguishes our system of government from monarchy or tyranny,” Harris said prior to the joint session in an apparent swipe at her 2024 opponent, who has refused to accept his 2020 loss to Biden.
“As we have seen, our democracy can be fragile, and it is up to, then, each one of us to stand up for our most cherished principles,” she added, “and to make sure that in America, our government always remains of the people, by the people and for the people.”
