President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris made their first joint public appearance since the vice president’s defeat to Donald Trump in the presidential election.
The two marked Veterans Day on Monday at Arlington National Cemetary, where the two laid a wreath as part of the annual ceremony. Biden then delivered remarks at the ceremony and hardly spoke of the election.
The event at Arlington is nonpartisan, and the two appeared together, walking in solemn procession. The vice president appeared stoic with no hint of a smile during the ceremony, while Biden appeared slightly stiff and was fighting a cough. His eyes appeared closed during parts of the event.
Harris and Biden were seeing with their hands on their heart at one point. When Biden addressed the crowd, Harris sat with First Lady Jill Biden and other members of the Biden White House.
“We have many obligations, but only one sacred obligation,” Biden said, speaking about caring for America’s service members and veterans. “We commit and recommit to the sacred vow.
“This is the last time I will stand at Arlington as Commander-in-Chief,” said Biden. “It has been the greatest honor of my life.”
He also spoke about his administration’s efforts to help veterans, including those exposed to chemicals released by burn pits — which Biden blamed in his remarks for the cancer that killed his son Beau.
Harris, his one-time running mate who took over the ticket after Biden dropped out, tread a difficult path in the weeks leading up to the election about her relationship with the president, and Monday’s ceremony is the first look for many at how that relationship fares post-election.
The vice president never broke in significant terms with her ex-running mate on policy matters, but their respective allies clashed privately and have now taken their disagreements public in the aftermath of the Democratic Party’s historic defeat.
Both sides have traded blame for their party’s defeat, threatening to fray a relationship some thought might have been already endangered by the month-long pressure campaign aimed at convincing the incumbent president to pass on the Democratic nomination to Harris.
Harris lost seven swing states, all thought to have been winnable for her campaign, while suffering some of the Democratic Party’s lowest margins in other states, including Democratic bastions, in years. Even more embarrassingly, Harris underperformed many of her party’s own candidates.
Their party now heads into January having lost the White House, control of the Senate, and likely having failed to flip control of the House of Representatives as well. Party leaders are under fire for suppressing calls for a true presidential primary in January, as well as the marginalizing of the voting coalition (young men, Latinos, Arab Americans and working-class voters) who supported Bernie Sanders in his two Democratic primary bids but either voted for Trump or simply stayed home last week.
