The vice presidency comes with loads of indignities, however most likely none better than the one Kamala Harris will endure on Monday when she presides over the certification of her defeat.
Underneath the Structure, the vp takes the gavel when the 2 homes of Congress meet to formally depend the Electoral Faculty votes for president. Whereas not each vp has chosen to satisfy the responsibility, Ms. Harris has indicated that she’s going to perform the duty, little doubt painful, of declaring that Donald J. Trump beat her.
Awkward and unsightly as it might be for Ms. Harris, whose personal political future stays unsure, it’s set to be a calmer and fewer death-defying expertise than 4 years in the past when Mr. Trump refused to simply accept defeat and struggled to carry on to energy after voters determined to throw him out of workplace. A mob he impressed marched on the Capitol and stormed the constructing to cease Vice President Mike Pence from fulfilling the responsibility that now falls to Ms. Harris.
Not like Mr. Trump, Ms. Harris has made no effort to forged doubt on the election however has as a substitute accepted defeat graciously. Neither she nor President Biden has sought to strain the Justice Division, members of Congress, governors, state legislators or election officers to reverse the vote she misplaced, as Mr. Trump did 4 years in the past.
She has not filed dozens of lawsuits that might be tossed out by judges as frivolous or unfounded. She has not repeated false fraud allegations or wild conspiracy theories that her personal advisers informed her have been unfaithful.
Nor has she thought of attempting to make use of her function as presiding officer to reject votes for Mr. Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance the best way Mr. Trump tried to get Mr. Pence to do to Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris in 2021. (Mr. Pence refused, saying he didn’t have such energy, and Congress subsequently handed a legislation reaffirming that interpretation.)
The distinction between the 2 Jan. 6 occasions might hardly be starker. 4 years in the past, the mob ransacking the Capitol chanted, “Hold Mike Pence,” whereas the Secret Service rushed the outgoing vp to security. Ms. Harris, then a senator on the verge of changing into vp, was at Democratic Nationwide Committee headquarters on the time and in addition needed to be evacuated, when a pipe bomb was discovered close to a park bench exterior.
Ms. Harris has largely remained out of public view for the reason that election amid hypothesis about what her future could maintain. Some allies need her to run for president once more in 2028, whereas others imagine she ought to as a substitute run for governor of her dwelling state, California, subsequent 12 months.
She has not given any public indication about her ideas past saying she intends to stay energetic. In a prerecorded video message that she plans to launch on Monday, she focuses on her responsibility to preside over the election certification, with an implicit nod to the distinction from 4 years in the past.
“The peaceable switch of energy is without doubt one of the most elementary ideas of American democracy,” Ms. Harris says within the video. “As a lot as every other precept, it’s what distinguishes our system of presidency from monarchy or tyranny.”
“Right this moment, at the US Capitol,” she continues, “I’ll carry out my constitutional responsibility as vp of the US to certify the outcomes of the 2024 election. This responsibility is a sacred obligation — one I’ll uphold guided by love of nation, loyalty to our Structure and my unwavering religion within the American folks.”
Ms. Harris will not be the primary vp to lose a presidential election and preside over its certification. In trendy occasions, two sitting vice presidents who misplaced achingly shut races for president — Richard M. Nixon in 1960 and Al Gore in 2000 — needed to stand within the rostrum the place she’s going to stand and depend the votes in opposition to them.
One other vp who misplaced a presidential bid, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, skipped the ceremony to attend the funeral of the primary U.N. secretary normal, leaving the duty of counting the votes to Senator Richard Russell, Democrat of Georgia and the president professional tempore of the Senate. Different vice presidents needed to preside over vote counts certifying their defeat for re-election, together with Walter F. Mondale in 1981 and Dan Quayle in 1993.
Each Mr. Nixon and Mr. Gore had loads of motive to object to the outcomes that they licensed. Mr. Nixon misplaced to John F. Kennedy by about 118,000 votes out of almost 69 million forged. Advisers urged him to problem the outcomes however he refused, sustaining that it could tear the nation aside.
Forty years later, Mr. Gore truly received the favored tally by greater than 500,000 votes out of 105 million forged, solely to fall quick within the Electoral Faculty. After the Supreme Courtroom ended 5 weeks of recounts in Florida, Mr. Gore accepted the choice of the justices and congratulated George W. Bush.
Each vice presidents carried out the responsibility of certifying their defeats with decided humor and charm, producing standing ovations from members of each events.
Noting that it was the primary time in a century {that a} presidential candidate had finalized the outcomes of an election he misplaced, Mr. Nixon known as the state of affairs a “placing and eloquent instance of the steadiness of our constitutional system” and establishments of self-government. “In our campaigns,” he mentioned, “irrespective of how hard-fought they could be, irrespective of how shut the election could turn into, those that lose settle for the decision and help those that win.”
When his flip got here, Mr. Gore even repeatedly dominated out of order efforts by a handful of Home Democrats to object to the Florida vote. “Could God bless our new president and our new vp,” Mr. Gore mentioned after declaring Mr. Bush the winner, “and will God bless the US of America.”
