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 but one of the 100 senators in attendance. Even Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), still recovering from a broken hip, was present to watch her successor as House Speaker, Mike Johnson (R-La.), preside alongside Harris.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who broke with Trump after he refused to accept Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, was nowhere to be found.
McConnell, 82, was not one of the seven Senate Republicans to vote to convict the former president for inciting an insurrection when a mob of his supporters breached the US Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, certification session.
But he privately blasted Trump as “stupid,” “ill-tempered,” a “narcissist” and a “despicable human being” behind closed doors in the final days of the president’s first administration, according to a bio on the Kentucky Republican published in October titled “The Price of Power.”
Monday’s joint session took place amid the backdrop of the chaos and violence of four years ago, with hundreds of extra National Guard members providing boosted security on Capitol Hill.
However, a combination of snowy weather and the emphatic nature of Trump’s victory kept any protesters and demonstrators away.
“Well today was, uh, obviously a very important day,” Harris told reporters after exiting the joint session of Congress.
“It was about what should be the norm and what the American people should take for granted, which is that one of the most important pillars of our democracy is that there will be a peaceful transfer of power,” she went on.
“And today I did what I have done my entire career, which is take seriously the oath, that I have taken many times, to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, which included today performing my constitutional duties to ensure that the people of America, the voters of America, will have their votes counted, that those votes matter and that they will determine, then, the outcome of an election,” she said, nearly slipping into one of her trademark “word salads.”
Harris added: “America’s democracy is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it.”
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.
Reps for McConnell’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
