Kamala Harris prepares for her final humiliation
If Congress certifies the results of the 2024 election on Monday, Kamala Harris will join a small and rather miserable club: vice presidents who have had to oversee the formal certification of their own defeat
Under the Constitution, the vice president is the head of the Senate, charged with the process of certifying the results of the elections in the White House.
That will come on January 6.
And it means that Harris, who lost all seven major battleground states to a candidate she called a fascist, must face the final humiliation by declaring Donald Trump the victor.
She will follow in the footsteps of Al Gore, Bill Clinton’s vice president, who had to concede defeat to Republican George W. Bush in 2001 after weeks of legal wrangling over hanging chads and narrow margins in Florida.
Before him, Richard Nixon (then vice president to Dwight D. Eisenhower) had to sign the results of his loss to John F. Kennedy after the 1960 election.
But there is a avoidance. Just don’t show up.
In 1969, Democratic Vice President Hubert Humphrey turned away and skipped certification. Instead, it was the job of the Senate president pro tempore (usually the most senior member of the majority party) to announce that Humphrey had lost during Nixon’s second run.
On Monday, Vice President Kamala Harris will preside over a joint session of Congress that will formally confirm her defeat in the 2024 election
Donald Trump will be sworn in for his second term as president in January 2020
On Friday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters she expected Harris to attend the joint session of Congress.
“I believe this is her plan,” she said.
Trump supporters have expressed joy at the idea of Harris formally declaring her Republican opponent the winner.
‘Kamala must announce the election results on Monday…’ conservative comedian Tim Young wrote on X: “It will be must-see TV.”
Someone reaching out to MAGA Michelle wrote, “The best part about this is that Kamala has to validate her own election offense, which brings back all the shame she must have felt.”
Marc Short, chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, said: “No one gets excited about admitting their own loss, but I think it is essential for all democracies that there is a peaceful transition of power.”
He said Harris wasn’t the only one who needed to fill the role.
“It’s happened to a lot of vice presidents,” he said.
Vice President Mike Pence on January 6, 2021, as he presided over a joint session of Congress before lawmakers were evacuated as a mob attacked the Capitol. The session reconvened later that evening to declare Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 election
Certification is usually a formality, a final round of voting and the final step in the process of electing a new government
“Only once in the 250 years of our republic was there an allegation that that person had unilateral authority to change the results.”
The process is usually a formality, a final round of voting and the final step in the process of electing a new government.
The events of January 6, 2021 changed all that. Trump refused to accept defeat and pressured Pence to set aside the results and declare his boss the winner.
Pence refused and the result was an angry mob that ransacked the Capitol and forced members of Congress to flee.
The vice president reconvened the session in the early morning hours and certified the election results just after 3:30 am.
That experience led Congress to update the Electoral Count Act to clarify that the vice president does not have the power to settle disputes over electors and must instead declare the results.