The peaceful transfer of power is back, America.
During her concession speech at Howard University Wednesday afternoon, Vice President Kamala Harris brought back from the dead one of America’s most storied traditions: presidential candidates accepting the results of an electoral defeat, urging their supporters to do the same and promising to cooperate with the incoming administration.
However one feels about a second Trump presidency, Harris’ words are crucially important for the health of American democracy.
“Now, I know folks are feeling and experiencing a range of emotions right now,” Harris said. “I get it, but 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 their transition, and that we will engage in a peaceful transfer of power.”
The mention of “President-elect Trump” generated a brief smattering of boos, which the vice president ignored. But the words “peaceful transfer of power” triggered cheers from her crestfallen supporters. That matters a lot.
However one feels about a second Trump presidency, Harris’ words are crucially important for the health of American democracy. To various degrees, 2024 will be the first generally accepted presidential election since George H.W. Bush decisively defeated Michael Dukakis in 1988.
A loud and prominent subset of Republicans never accepted the legitimacy of either of Bill Clinton’s elections because he never won an outright majority in the popular vote, mainly because third-party candidate Ross Perot took roughly 18.9% and 8.4% of the popular vote in 1992 and 1996.
Then came 2000, when George W. Bush lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College after the Supreme Court halted Florida’s recount with Bush ahead by 537 votes. Many Democrats never accepted Bush’s legitimacy after that, even when he won re-election in 2004, as a small group of Democrats insisted some vote-counting hanky panky in Ohio unfairly swung the Buckeye State to Bush.
Barack Obama was elected in a popular and electoral landslide in 2008, then handily re-elected in 2012. But a fake conspiracy theory alleging Obama’s foreign birth — a racist lie most prominently amplified by Trump — led millions of Americans to insist Obama’s two decisive victories were actually unconstitutional.
Then there was 2016, when Hillary Clinton lost a seemingly unlosable election to the political novice Trump amid evidence of Russian election interference. Many overwrought Democrats refused to accept the glaring failures of their nominee’s campaign and instead overhyped Trump and Vladimir Putin’s very real and nefarious connections into a fantasy of Trump as a “Manchurian candidate” puppet.
But in all of those elections, the vanquished opponent conceded. And, with the exception of Al Gore in 2000, they conceded quickly. (However, Gore’s eventual concession after the Supreme Court decision gracefully accepted the legitimacy of Bush’s presidency and called for unity among Americans.)
It was only in 2020, when Trump lost a close election — but decisively — that the 220-year-old tradition of peaceful transfer of power was broken. And it was broken for no good reason.
Trump spread lies made up of whole cloth about election fraud that were so baseless that they were rejected by GOP state officials, his own attorney general, his daughter Ivanka and by a Supreme Court with a 6-3 conservative majority (including three Trump appointees). He will now very likely escape prosecution for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol (and for illegally hoarding national security documents).
Someone had to make a gesture that the rhetorical war that is an election is now over.
In Harris’ case, after running a campaign that correctly made an issue out of the uniquely destructive force Trump has been to the American body politic — including testimonials from his own former Cabinet members that he’s an unhinged fascist — the vice president accepted the will of the people. Much as a defeated Sen. John McCain did in 2008 when he told his supporters that the failing was his and not theirs and called Obama “my president,” Harris made it clear that Trump will be her president — just as he will be for over 300 million Americans.
The fact that the words “peaceful transfer of power” generated applause among Harris’ supporters at Howard says something important about the state of America right now. A defeated Trump would never say those words; we know this because he didn’t when he was defeated. And his supporters would never applaud such a line because Trump convinced them of the big lie that “they” stole the 2020 election.
Someone had to make a gesture that the rhetorical war that is an election is now over. The loser has conceded, for the good of the country, even though the winner never would.