Cedric Richmond Tells Kamala Harris Election Party She Will Not Be Speaking Tonight, to Groans From Supporters

Kamala Harris’s campaign co-chair took the stage at Howard University early Wednesday morning to announce that the vice president would not be addressing the crowd until later in the day.

Students had rallied at Harris’ alma mater while the votes were being totaled in anticipation of a Harris victory speech.

“We will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted, that every voice is spoken. So you won’t hear from the vice president tonight, but you will hear from her tomorrow. She will be back here tomorrow,” said Cedric Richmond, senior advisor to the Democratic National Committee.

CNN’s Jake Tapper said the announcement “is what we could expect given the fact that we are not going to know definitively this evening the results” of the presidential election.

“If you’ve ever been to Howard University when there’s a big crowd, that is not the sound of a big crowd there,” said election night panelist Audie Cornish. “That is not a celebratory mood, and I think it was a tough kind of coming out conversation for Cedric Richmond.”

Dana Bash compared Richmond’s brief speech to John Podesta’s address in 2016 when he told the crowd at New York’s Javitz Center that Hillary Clinton would not be speaking that evening.

“Yeah, I mean, it’s the 2024 version of the Javitz Center at this time,” Bash said. “I’m not saying that it’s going to end this way, but at this time. It’s feeling like it is too early, and this senior person comes out and says, ‘Everybody go home and we will see what happens.’ And, we will see what happens when we get the rest of the votes.”

Chris Wallace was just as somber when he, too, compared the mood of the night to 2016 when Trump beat Clinton.

“In the immortal words of Bob Dylan, ‘You don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing,'” Wallace said. “We talked before about whether this felt more like 2020 or 2016. This felt so much like the Javitz Center, and specifically, her campaign chairman, John Podesta, came out at almost exactly this same point eight years ago and made almost exactly that same speech. And the next day, Hillary Clinton came out and conceded. Now, again, [Trump] is not at 270 yet. [Harris] has not lost this race. But, you don’t have to be a weatherman.”

Watch the clip above via CNN.