BY LOU S. SIFA

“I will never give up the fight for a future where Americans can pursue their dreams, ambitions, and aspirations. Where the women of America have the freedom to make decisions about their own body and not have their government telling them what to do. We will never give up the fight to protect our schools and our streets from gun violence,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in her concession speech on November 6, with probably thousands of her deeply-shaken supporters—some literally weeping—gathered at Howard University, one of the nation’s most prominent Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

The Internet and the airwaves will most likely buzz for a long time and books will be written about conflicting explanations as to why Vice President Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential election, the first time she has failed to add another first to her long list of firsts. But it boiled down to the failure of Harris’ long-shot attempt, in a short 107-day campaign, to convince 25% of Black male voters in Pennsylvania and the majority of male Latino voters nationwide that the only reason why they now pay more for bread, milk, and cereals is the devastating Covid-19 pandemic that severely disrupted the economy worldwide. Just as no one can persuade most of the least uneducated American voters, such as plumbers and electricians, that inflation has finally come down to its pre-pandemic level, with its welcome impact on the cost of groceries to be felt better soon. That is not to mention how well the other side of the campaign has succeeded in stoking fear by dehumanizing immigrants—in this nation of immigrants.

Losing an election can be devastating. Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reportedly cried literally when she lost her bid for the presidency in 2016. But it’s one thing to lose on the basis of policy differences in a civil contest of ideas, and a totally different thing to lose to a vulgar opponent who has no limit in ugly name calling. Playing, as it were, by the African adage, “if a crazy person insults you and runs away, don’t run after him, else you would be viewed as crazy, too,” Harris took the highway. She did mention during the single presidential debate where she crushed her opponent who is notorious for his inability to articulate any policy idea, his unclean rise to worth which includes filing for bankruptcy six times.

Harris didn’t need to mention any of Trump’s scandals, not even arguably the most egregious ones: The fake Trump University that Mr. Trump used to defraud people and had to pay $25 million upon winning the 2016 presidential election to settle a civil suit filed by the State of New York and two class act cases. Harris didn’t have to mention that in February 2024, Trump was ordered by the New York Supreme Court to pay more than $450 million for engaging in “massive fraud to falsely inflate his net worth and unjustly enrich himself, his family, and his organization,” upon which he was banned from doing business in New York for three years.

Truth be told, Harris didn’t have to say all that because Trump’s likely Secretary of State, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and other top Republican lawmakers had taken care of that.

At a rally held in late February 2016 in Texas during the presidential campaign, Rubio literally eviscerated Donald Trump, saying “He is a con artist. He runs on this idea he is fighting for the little guy, but he has spent his entire career sticking it to the little guy—his entire career.” Rubio ridiculed Trump’s claims to be a tough man. The senator told the cheering crowd during that same rally: “A tough guy? This guy inherited $200 million. He’s never faced any struggle.”

It was no different with another influential Republican senator, Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, who also ran in 2016. “The more you know about Donald Trump, the less likely you are to vote for him,” Graham said in an interview with CNN during the 2016 campaign. The South Carolina senator hiked his criticism of Trump by saying, “You know how you make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.” But it didn’t stop there, for Graham added, “He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.”

“A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results,” Harris said in her concession speech, a thinly veiled swap at Trump who staged an unprecedented, deadly attack on the sanctuary of American democracy on January 6, 2021, refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election crystal-clearly won by Joe Biden. In a clear voice, despite the arguably devastating loss, Harris also said: “while I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign—the fight: the fight for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness, and the dignity of all people. A fight for the ideals at the heart of our nation, the ideals that reflect America at our best. That is a fight I will never give up.’”

Certainly, to uplift the crowd, the vice-president shared a silver lining that she saw in the somber moment: “There’s an adage a historian once called a law of history, true of every society across the ages. The adage is, only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. I know many people feel like we are entering a dark time, but for the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case. But here’s the thing, America, if it is, let us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion stars. The light, the light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service.”

Referring to one of her campaign slogans, “when we fight, we win,” she admitted that “sometimes the fight takes a while. That doesn’t mean we won’t win.” Sounding like a Barack Obama, she added: “Don’t ever stop trying to make the world a better place. You have power. You have power. And don’t you ever listen when anyone tells you something is impossible because it has never been done before.”

As the country continues to process the result of the election, with Democrats blaming each other for the loss, many believe that the formidable former Californian prosecutor who climbed the ladder of success at an unusually fast pace to become the attorney general of the largest state in the country, then the first woman as well as first Black person and Asian American to become vice president, will continue to fight for the people in one capacity or another.