Since keeping a low profile following her election loss, Vice President Kamala Harris reemerged Tuesday with remarks aimed at younger voters, urging them not to give up hope during a second Donald Trump term.
“Over the past several weeks, I have received tens of thousands of letters from people across our nation. Americans from every walk of life. People of every age, race, faith and political party. These letters share a common theme. Yes, there is disappointment, but there is resolve for the future,” Harris said, according to prepared remarks shared by the White House.
The vice president’s remarks alongside young community leaders at a community college in Prince George’s County, Maryland — a blue state that just elected a Black woman to the U.S. Senate, Democrat Angela Alsobrooks — came after Trump registered gains with voters under 30, even though Harris did better with younger voters overall.
The president-elect beat Harris by 2 percentage points among men under 30, four years after President Joe Biden posted an 11-point lead among the same cohort, according to NBC News exit polling. The outlet determined that Trump won more under-30 voters than any Republican presidential candidate had since 2008 — and that his gains extended to young women too.
Harris, in her first major address since losing the election, did not indicate what’s next for her now or in 2026, when some pundits believe she should run for California governor.
“As we approach the end of this year, many people have come up to me, telling me they feel tired … maybe even resigned. That they’re not sure whether they have the strength, much less the desire, to stay in the fight,” Harris said Tuesday. “But let me be very clear: No one can walk away. We must stay in the fight.”
Harris struck a similarly optimistic tone in her concession speech at Howard University the day after the election.
“While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign,” she said last month.
