The peaceful transfer of power is here again, America.

During her concession speech at Howard University Wednesday afternoon, Vice President Kamala Harris brought back from the dead one of America’s richest traditions: presidential candidates accept the results of an electoral defeaturging his supporters to do the same and promising to cooperate with the new administration.

“Now I know that people are feeling and experiencing a whole range of emotions right now,” Harris said. “I understand, but we have to accept the results of this election. Earlier today, I spoke with President-elect Trump and congratulated him on his victory. I also told him that we would help him and his team with their transition and engage in a peaceful transfer of power.

The mention of “President-elect Trump” generated a brief handful of boos, which the vice president ignored. But the words “peaceful transfer of power” sparked cheers from his dispirited supporters. That matters a lot.

However we feel Regarding a second Trump presidency, Harris’ remarks are critically important to the health of American democracy. To varying degrees, 2024 will be the first generally accepted presidential election since George HW Bush’s decisive victory over Michael Dukakis in 1988.

A large and significant group of Republicans never accepted the legitimacy of Bill Clinton’s election because he never achieved an outright majority in the popular vote, primarily because third-party candidate Ross Perot won. approximately 18.9% And 8.4% of the popular vote in 1992 and 1996.

Then came 2000, when George W. Bush lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College after the Supreme Court halted the Florida recount, with Bush ahead by 537 votes. Many Democrats never accepted Bush’s legitimacy afterward, even when he was re-elected in 2004, as shown a small group of Democrats insisted some hanky panky vote counting in Ohio unfairly tilted the Buckeye State toward Bush.

Barack Obama was elected in a popular and electoral tidal wave in 2008, then re-elected handily in 2012. But a false conspiracy theory alleging Obama was born abroad – a racist lie amplified by in a highly visible manner by Trump – led millions of Americans to insist on Obama’s two decisive victories. were in fact unconstitutional.

Then there was 2016, when Hillary Clinton lost a seemingly unlosable election to political novice Trump amid evidence of Russian election interference. Many overworked Democrats refused to accept the glaring failures of their candidate’s campaign and instead exaggerated the very real and harmful ties of Trump and Vladimir Putin by imagining Trump as a “Manchurian Candidate” puppet.

But in all of these elections, the defeated opponent conceded. And, with the exception of Al Gore in 2000, they quickly conceded. (However, Gore’s final concession after the Supreme Court decision graciously accepted the legitimacy of Bush’s presidency and called for unity among Americans.)

It was only in 2020, when Trump lost a close – but decisive – election that the 220-year-old tradition of peaceful transfer of power was broken. And it was broken for no good reason.

Trump spread outright lies about election fraud that were so baseless that they were rejected by Republican state officials, his own attorney general, his daughter Ivanka, and by a Supreme Court with a conservative majority of 6 to 3 (including three appointed by Trump). . He will now most likely escape prosecution for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and his incitement of the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 (and for illegally hoarding national security documents).

In Harris’ case, after running a campaign that correctly highlighted the uniquely destructive force Trump has exerted on the American body politic – including testimonies from his own former Cabinet members that he is an unhinged fascist — the vice president accepted the will of the people. Just as defeated Senator John McCain did in 2008 when he told his supporters that the failure was his, not theirs, and referred to Obama as “my president,” Harris made clear that Trump would be its president – ​​just as he will be for more than a year. 300 million Americans.

The fact that the words “peaceful transfer of power” sparked applause among Harris’ supporters at Howard reveals something important about the current state of America. A defeated Trump would never utter these words; we know this because he didn’t do it when he was defeated. And his supporters would never applaud such a line because Trump convinced them of the big lie that “they” stole the 2020 election.

Someone had to make a move to show that the rhetorical war that is an election is now over. The loser conceded, for the good of the country, even if the winner never would.