It may seem like the worst punishment for losing, but the reality is that it comes with the job.
So, when Kamala Harris, of all people, stands before a joint session of Congress and bangs the gavel certifying the electoral votes that will make Donald Trump president — again — she’ll be fulfilling a constitutional obligation.
It wasn’t what she had in mind.
“We must accept the results of this election,” Harris told supporters at her alma mater, Howard University, on Wednesday, a day after her painful, resounding defeat.
“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 we will engage in a peaceful transfer of power.”
Being the one to make Trump’s comeback “official” has to be the ultimate indignity for Harris after she endured months of lies, insults and racist barbs on the campaign.
But as vice president, Harris is also president of the Senate, and her obligations as such could not be made clearer in the Constitution.
“The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President,” reads the 12th Amendment.
As cruel as it seems, Harris won’t be setting any kind of precedent.
On Jan. 6, 1961, Vice President Richard Nixon had to certify the election of John F. Kennedy, who had defeated him months earlier.
And in 2001, former Vice President Al Gore had the unenviable task of certifying the win of George W. Bush, the candidate who beat him by the thinnest of margins in one of the most contested elections in American history.
It was the last time an incumbent vice president ran for president.
That year, Gore won the popular vote, but the electoral vote count dragged on for more than two months and wasn’t decided until the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, stepped in and awarded Florida’s 25 electoral votes to Bush.
Candidates need 270 votes to claim victory. Bush got 271.
Gore conceded the election on December 13.
Gore had to certify Bush’s win.
“The whole number of the electors appointed to vote for president of the United States is 538,” Gore said from the rostrum, going on to read off his own loss to Congress.
“George W. Bush of the state of Texas has received for president of the United States 271 votes. Al Gore of the state of Tennessee has received 266 votes. May God bless our new president and new vice president, and may God bless the United States of America.”
But the certification did not go on without a hitch.
The ceremony was disrupted by a symbolic protest organized by members the Congressional Black Caucus, who complained that the Florida outcome was unfair.
One by one, 16 representatives, most of them African American, stood up to voice their objections.
They were quickly, and respectfully, gaveled to order by the man whose cause they were advocating — Al Gore.
As protests go, their demonstration barely made a blip on the radar when compared to what would happen on Jan. 6, 2021, when sore loser Trump sicced his MAGA mob on the U.S. Capitol in a bid to disrupt the certification process after Joe Biden dethroned him months earlier.
Harris was hoping to do what Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, had done in 1989 and certify his own election win.
Instead, Harris will be another footnote, an insult-on-top-of-injury answer to the most ironic of trivia questions
