Where on earth is Kamala Harris?

Empty chairs at the Harris Walz party
She hasn’t yet conceded to Trump - JIM LO SCALZO//Shutterstock

Something is missing from America’s political landscape right now – no, not just the traditional losing candidate’s concession speech, but the losing candidate herself. Kamala Harris – now officially a “former” presidential candidate – is nowhere to be found.

Of course it’s early and Harris will presumably materialise sometime in the coming hours or days. But as has been the case throughout her brief and fraught presidential campaign, she is proving herself a master of political and cultural elusiveness.

This, in the end, has turned out to be Harris’ Achilles’ heel. Whereas Donald Trump – all spectacular assassination attempts and endless over-sharing – has left little unrevealed or unsaid during his career, Harris refused to truly allow America in. Plagued by her penchant for verbal gaffes and goofy laughs, she relied on celebrity endorsements and carefully-crafted media ops to tell her story – rather than telling it herself.

Right now, in this moment of regime-change so monumental it’s generated fears of violence, America needs Harris to step up, step out and help her supporters figure out what happens next. Harris must publicly accept Trump’s win.

Like with Hillary Clinton – who formally and gracefully conceded to Trump almost immediately – Harris needs to help lay out a pathway forward. Both for pouty progressives baffled that they have lost – yet again – and for the entire nation, for which old will soon become very new once again.

As America prepares itself for Trump 2.0, Americans need Kamala Harris to reassure those who did not back him that not all is lost – that the system worked, that the results are authentic, that democracy has not died, and that the will of the people always comes first.

Harris always positioned herself as the ultimate “anti-Trump” – all grace compared to his gruff. In the days following President Biden’s win back in 2020, Trump hid and hectored and refused to honour the traditions of presidential transitions. Which is why the most “anti-Trump” thing Harris can do right now is be the elegant loser Trump never managed to become.