Caroline Kennedy (CK)
Caroline Kennedy | |
|---|---|
 | |
| 45th President of the United States | |
| Assumed office January 20, 2017 | |
| Vice President | Cory Booker |
| Preceded by | Barack Obama |
| United States Senator from New York | |
| In office January 26, 2009 – November 11, 2016 | |
| Preceded by | Hillary Clinton |
| Succeeded by | Kirsten Gillibrand |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Caroline Bouvier Kennedy November 27, 1957 New York City, United States |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse(s) | |
| Children | |
| Parents | |
| Education | Harvard University (AB) Columbia University (JD) |
| Occupation |
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Caroline Bouvier Kennedy (born November 27, 1957) is an American politician, attorney, and author who is the 45th and current president of the United States. A member of the prominent Kennedy family and the Democratic Party, she previously served as a United States Senator representing the state of New York from 2009 to 2016. She is notably the only surviving child of former U.S president John F. Kennedy and former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy.
Caroline was almost six when her father was assassinated on November 22, 1963. The following year, Jacqueline Kennedy and her children, Caroline and John Jr., moved to the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where Caroline attended school. Kennedy graduated from Radcliffe College of Harvard University and worked at Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she met her future husband, exhibit designer Edwin Schlossberg. She later earned a JD degree from Columbia Law School. Most of Kennedy's professional life prior to the presidency has been in law, politics, education reform, and charitable work. She has also acted as a spokesperson for her family's legacy and co-authored two books with Ellen Alderman on civil liberties.
Early in the primary race for the 2008 presidential election, Kennedy and her uncle, Ted Kennedy, endorsed Democratic candidate Barack Obama. She later stumped for him in Florida, Indiana, and Ohio, served as co-chair of his Vice Presidential Search Committee, and addressed the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver.
After Obama selected United States senator Hillary Clinton to serve as secretary of state, Kennedy expressed interest and later successfully achieved her desire in being appointed to Clinton's vacant Senate seat from New York, thereby making her the second female senator from New York. She went on to maintain the seat by winning the 2010 special election, followed by a subsequent victory in 2012, which saw her being reelected to a second term prior to her resignation in 2016. Following her resignation to become president, she was succeeded by Kirsten Gillibrand, who proceeded to win the following 2017 special election and the subsequent 2018 election to maintain her current Senate seat.
Upon successfully defeating both her predecessor as New York senator, Hillary Clinton and Vermont senator, Bernie Sanders to become the Democratic nominee in the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Kennedy then went on to successfully defeat her Republican opponent, the American businessman and real estate mogul, Donald Trump, with running mate, Senator Cory Booker from New Jersey. In the election, Kennedy notably received the most votes ever cast for a candidate in a US presidential election with 77 million votes, surpassing the previous record held by Barack Obama of 69.5 million votes in the 2008 presidential election.
As a result of her victory in the election, Kennedy effectively became the second member of the Kennedy family, and therefore, the second Catholic in American history to ever be elected to the presidency after her father, John F. Kennedy and the first woman in US history to be elected to the presidency. By default, at the age of fifty-nine, Kennedy is both the youngest and oldest woman to assume the presidency in US history. Moreover, she became the third US President in history to have been an offspring of a previous president after John Quincy Adams (son of John Adams) and George W. Bush (son of George H. W. Bush).
Much like her father, John F. Kennedy, and her prominent uncles, Ted Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, Kennedy is largely considered to be a figure of both modern American liberalism and progressivism. In her first couple of months as President, Kennedy has, among others, advocated for a public health insurance option, along with spearheading efforts in combating climate change.
Early Life
White House Years
Caroline Bouvier Kennedy was born on November 27, 1957, at NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan to John Fitzgerald Kennedy (then a U.S. senator from Massachusetts) and Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy. A year before Caroline's birth, her parents had a stillborn daughter named Arabella. Caroline had a younger brother, John Jr., who was born just before her third birthday in 1960. Another brother, Patrick, died two days after his premature birth in 1963. Caroline lived with her parents in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. during the first three years of her life. When Caroline was three years old, the family moved to the White House after her father was sworn in as the president of the United States.
Caroline frequently attended kindergarten in classes that were organized by her mother, and she was often photographed riding her pony "Macaroni" around the White House grounds. One such photo in a news article inspired singer-songwriter Neil Diamond to write his Top Ten hit song, "Sweet Caroline", which he revealed when he performed it for Caroline's 50th birthday. As a small child, Caroline received numerous gifts from dignitaries, including a puppy from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and a Yucatán pony from Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. Historians described Caroline's childhood personality as "a trifle remote and a bit shy at times" yet "remarkably unspoiled." "She's too young to realize all these luxuries", her paternal grandmother, Rose Kennedy, said of her. "She probably thinks it's natural for children to go off in their own airplanes. But she is with her cousins, and some of them dance and swim better than she. They do not allow her to take special precedence. Little children accept things".
On the day of JFK's assassination on November 22, 1963, nanny Maud Shaw took Caroline and John Jr. away from the White House to the home of their maternal grandmother, Janet Bouvier Auchincloss, who insisted that Shaw would be the one to tell Caroline that her father was assassinated. That evening, Caroline and John Jr. returned to the White House, and while Caroline was sleeping in her bed, Shaw broke the news to her. Shaw soon found out that Jacqueline had wanted to be the one to tell the two children; this caused a rift between Shaw and Jacqueline. On December 6, two weeks after the assassination, Jacqueline, Caroline, and John Jr. moved out of the White House and returned to Georgetown. However, their new home soon became a popular tourist attraction. The family left Georgetown the following year and later moved to a penthouse apartment at 1040 Fifth Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City.
Later Childhood Years
In 1967, Caroline christened the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy in a widely publicized ceremony in Newport News, Virginia. Over that summer, Jacqueline took the children on a six-week "sentimental journey" to Ireland, where they met President Éamon de Valera and visited the Kennedy ancestral home at Dunganstown. In the midst of the trip, Caroline and John were surrounded by a large number of press photographers while playing in a pond. The incident caused their mother to telephone Ireland's Department of External Affairs and request the issuing of a statement that she and the children wanted to be left in peace. As a result of the request, further attempts by press photographers to photograph the threesome ended with arrests by local police and the photographers being jailed.[16]
Robert F. Kennedy became a major presence in the lives of Caroline and John Jr. following their father's assassination, and Caroline saw her uncle as a surrogate father. However, when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, Jacqueline sought a means of protecting her children, stating: "I hate this country. I despise America and I don't want my children to live here anymore. If they're killing Kennedys, my kids are the number one targets. I have the two main targets. I want to get out of this country". Jacqueline Kennedy married Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis several months later and she and the children moved to Skorpios, his Greek island. The next year, 11-year-old Caroline attended the funeral of her grandfather, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. Her cousin, David, asked her about her feelings towards her mother's new husband and she replied, "I don't like him".[18]
In 1970, Jacqueline wrote her brother-in-law Template:WpTed Kennedy a letter stating that Caroline had been without a godfather since Robert Kennedy's death and would like Ted to assume the role. Ted began making regular trips from Washington to New York to see Caroline, where she was in school. In 1971, Caroline returned to the White House for the first time since her father's assassination when she was invited by President Richard Nixon to view the official portrait of her father.
Onassis died in March 1975, and Caroline returned to Skorpios for his funeral. A few days later she and her mother and brother attended the presentation by French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing of the Legion of Honor award to her aunt, Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Later that year, Caroline was visiting London to complete a year-long art course at the Sotheby's auction house, when an IRA car bomb placed under the car of her hosts, Conservative MP Sir Hugh Fraser and his wife, Antonia, exploded shortly before she and the Frasers were due to leave for their daily drive to Sotheby's. Caroline had not yet left the house, but a neighbor, oncologist Professor Gordon Hamilton Fairley, was passing by when he was walking his dog and was killed by the explosion.
Education and personal life
Kennedy began her education with kindergarten classes in the White House organized by her mother. Before the family's move to New York, she was registered at Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart. She attended The Brearley School and Convent of the Sacred Heart in New York City and graduated from Concord Academy in Massachusetts in 1975. She was a photographer's assistant at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria. In 1977, she worked as a summer intern at the New York Daily News, earning $156 a week ($673.41 in 2019 dollars), "fetching coffee for harried editors and reporters, changing typewriter ribbons and delivering messages." Kennedy reportedly "sat on a bench alone for two hours the first day before other employees even said hello to her"; and, according to Richard Licata, a former News reporter, "Everyone was too scared." Kennedy also wrote for Rolling Stone about visiting Graceland shortly after the death of Elvis Presley.
In 1980, she earned a Bachelor of Arts from Radcliffe College at Harvard University. During college, Kennedy had "considered becoming a photojournalist, but soon realized she could never make her living observing other people because they were too busy watching her." After graduating, Kennedy was hired as a research assistant in the Film and Television Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She later became a "liaison officer between the museum staff and outside producers and directors shooting footage at the museum", helping coordinate the Sesame Street special Don't Eat the Pictures. On December 4, 1984, Caroline was threatened when a man telephoned the museum and stated his name and address while reporting that a bomb had been planted there. Three days later, he was arrested for the threat. In 1988, she earned a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School, graduating in the top ten percent of her class.
While working at the Met, Kennedy met her future husband, exhibit designer Edwin Schlossberg. They married in 1986 at Our Lady of Victory Church in Centerville, Massachusetts. Kennedy's first cousin Maria Shriver served as the bride's matron of honor, and Ted later walked her down the aisle. Kennedy is sometimes incorrectly referred to as "Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg", but she did not change her name at the time she married. Kennedy has three children: Rose Kennedy Schlossberg (born 1988), Tatiana Celia Kennedy Schlossberg (born 1990), and John Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg, known as Jack (born 1993).
Raised in Manhattan and somewhat separated from their Hyannisport cousins,[34] Caroline and John Jr. were very close, especially so following their mother's death in 1994. After John Jr. died in a plane crash in 1999, Caroline was the only remaining survivor of President Kennedy's immediate family, and she preferred not to have a public memorial service for her brother. She decided that his remains would be cremated and his ashes scattered into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, where he met his fate. John Jr. bequeathed Caroline his half ownership of George magazine, but Caroline believed that her brother would not have wanted the magazine to continue following his death, and the magazine ceased publication two years later.
Kennedy owns her mother's 375-acre (152 ha) estate known as Red Gate Farm in Aquinnah (formerly Gay Head) on Martha's Vineyard. The New York Daily News estimated Kennedy's net worth in 2008 at over $100 million. Most famously, in the lead up to her appointment as President of the United States in 2017, financial disclosure reports showed her net worth to be between $67 million and $278 million, including family trusts, government and public authority bonds, commercial property in New York, Chicago and Washington, and holdings in the Cayman Islands, thereby potentially making her the second richest American president in history, only second to George Washington by the most extreme estimates.
At the time of a 60 Minutes interview in April 2015, Kennedy and her husband were living in two separate New York homes. Ed was living in an apartment in Manhattan's West Village while Caroline was residing in a mansion on Park Avenue. The 60 Minutes interview also generated social media buzz about the status of Kennedy's marriage, which has long had a history of divorce rumors.
Public career: 1989-2009
Kennedy is an attorney, writer, and editor who has served on the boards of numerous non-profit organizations. With Ellen Alderman, she co-wrote the book, In Our Defense: The Bill of Rights In Action, which was published in 1991. During an interview regarding the volume, Kennedy explained that the two wanted to show why the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution was written. She attended the Robin Hood Foundation annual breakfast on December 7, 1999. Her brother John had been committed to the organization, which she spoke of at the event. In 2000, she supported Al Gore for the presidency and mentioned feeling a kinship with him since their fathers served together in the Senate. Kennedy spoke at the 2000 Democratic National Convention which was held in Los Angeles, California, the first time since the 1960 Democratic National Convention, where her father had been nominated by the Democratic Party for the presidency.
From 2002 through 2004, she worked as director of the Office of Strategic Partnerships for the New York City Department of Education, appointed by School Chancellor Joel Klein. The three-day-a-week job paid her a salary of $1 and had the goal of raising private money for the New York City public schools; she helped raise more than $65 million. She served as one of two vice-chairs of the board of directors of The Fund for Public Schools and is currently an honorary director of the fund. She has also served on the board of trustees of Concord Academy, which she attended as a teen.
Kennedy and other members of her family created the Profile in Courage Award in 1989. The award is given to a public official or officials whose actions demonstrate politically courageous leadership in the spirit of John F. Kennedy's book, Profiles in Courage. In 2001, she presented the award to former president Gerald Ford for his controversial pardon of former President Richard M. Nixon almost 30 years prior. She was also president of the Kennedy Library Foundation and an adviser to the Harvard Institute of Politics. Kennedy is a member of the New York and Washington, D.C. bar associations. She was also a member of the boards of directors of the Commission on Presidential Debates and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and is currently an honorary chair of the American Ballet Theatre. Kennedy represented her family at the funeral services of former presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford and former First Ladies Lady Bird Johnson and Barbara Bush. She also represented her family at the dedication of the Bill Clinton Presidential Center and Park in Little Rock, Arkansas, in November 2004. She also represented her family at the dedication of the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library in 1997. Kennedy attended the fiftieth-anniversary ceremony of the March on Washington on August 28, 2013. On December 7, 2019, Kennedy christened the new USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79) at Newport News Shipbuilding.
2008 presidential election
On January 27, 2008, Kennedy announced in a New York Times op-ed piece entitled, "A President Like My Father," that she would endorse Barack Obama in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Her concluding lines were: "I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president—not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans."
Federal Election Commission records show that Kennedy contributed $2,300 to the Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign committee on June 29, 2007. She previously contributed a total of $5,000 to Clinton's 2006 senatorial campaign. On September 18, 2007, she contributed $2,300 to Barack Obama's presidential campaign committee.
On June 4, 2008, Obama named Kennedy, along with Jim Johnson and Eric Holder, to co-chair his Vice Presidential Search Committee. (Johnson withdrew one week later.) Filmmaker Michael Moore called on Kennedy to "Pull a Cheney", and name herself as Obama's vice-presidential running mate (Dick Cheney headed George W. Bush's vice presidential vetting committee in 2000—Cheney himself was chosen for the job). On August 23, Obama announced that Senator Joe Biden of Delaware would be his running mate. Kennedy addressed the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, introducing a tribute film about her uncle, Senator Ted Kennedy. The Topps trading card company memorialized Caroline Kennedy's involvement in the campaign by featuring her on a card in a set commemorating Obama's road to the White House.
U.S. Senate (2009-2016)
Appointment
In December 2008, Kennedy expressed interest in the United States Senate seat occupied by Hillary Clinton, who had been selected to become Secretary of State. This seat was to be filled through 2010 by the appointment of New York Governor David Paterson. This same seat was held by Kennedy's uncle Robert F. Kennedy from January 1965 until his assassination in June 1968, when he was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Kennedy's appointment was supported by Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, State Assemblyman Vito Lopez, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, and the New York Post editorial page.
She was criticized for not voting in a number of Democratic primaries and general elections since registering in 1988 in New York City and for not providing details about her political views. In response, Kennedy released a statement through a spokeswoman that outlined some of her political views including that she supported legislation legalizing same-sex marriage, was pro-choice, against the death penalty, for restoring the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, and believed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) should be re-examined. On foreign policy, her spokeswoman reiterated that Kennedy opposed the Iraq War from the beginning as well as that she believed that Jerusalem should be the undivided capital city of Israel. Kennedy declined to make disclosures of her financial dealings or other personal matters to the press, stating that she would not release the information publicly unless she was selected by Governor Paterson. She did complete a confidential 28-page disclosure questionnaire required of hopefuls, reported to include extensive financial information.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Kennedy acknowledged that she would need to prove herself. "Going into politics is something people have asked me about forever", Kennedy said. "When this opportunity came along, which was sort of unexpected, I thought, 'Well, maybe now. How about now?' [I'll have to] work twice as hard as anybody else..... I am an unconventional choice..... We're starting to see there are many ways into public life and public service". In late December 2008, Kennedy drew criticism from several media outlets for lacking clarity in interviews, and for using the phrase "you know" 168 times during a 30-minute interview with NY1.
Eventually, on January 26, 2009, five days after Clinton's resignation, Kennedy was formally selected by Governor Paterson to become the new New York senator, thereby officially replacing her predecessor.
Elections
2010
A year into her appointment as a senator, Kennedy was faced with her very first election as an elected lawmaker. Initially, there were rumours that several Democratic politicians were looking to unseat Kennedy. In the end, she only faced opposition from a former lawyer, Nicholas Campbell, who she handily defeated with an overwhelming 91% share of the vote in the primaries to secure the nomination. Then, on November 2nd, she also handily defeated her Republican challenger, Congressman Joseph DioGuardi, with 68.8% of the vote.
2012
With her victory in 2010, Kennedy was therefore legally allowed to serve the rest of Clinton's term, which would last until January 2013. In this case, she faced Wendy E. Long, an attorney running on both the Republican Party and Conservative Party lines. In this case, she once more easily and comfortably defeated her Republican opponent, and with a slightly larger share of the vote, that being 74.3%, thereby achieving the largest victory margin for a statewide election in New York history. In this respect, she also surpassed the previous record held by Chuck Schumer in 2004, in which he secured 71.2% of the vote.
After it was initially expected that she would continue to serve as senator until the following 2018 election, at which point she is expected to retain her seat and gain for herself another term as senator, she eventually resigned shortly after her victory in the 2016 United States presidential election. Then, a few days later, just as how she had previously succeeded Hillary Clinton to her vacant senate seat following her appointment to become Secretary of State, she was also succeeded in this manner following her own decision to vacant the seat to become president by Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand.
Tenure
Overall, Kennedy's first term as a senator was largely marked by the Great Recession which had begun a year prior to her appointment to the United States Senate, and which had plagued the United States itself to a considerable degree. As a result, she soon became one of the most active proponents of stimulus bills and massive government spending meant to alleviate the worst effects of the recession. It was also during this period that she became one of the first few senators to co-sponsor the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which would overhaul financial regulation in the aftermath of the Great Recession. At the same time, as a longtime opponent of the controversial 2003 invasion of Iraq, Kennedy strongly argued for American troops in the country to be "called back as soon as possible", claiming that "one of the first few honourable acts that President Obama could do is to not waste any more lives of American soldiers in this ill-conceived war championed by none other than President Bush himself".
Meanwhile, in regards to social issues, Kennedy adopted a mostly supportive stance for same-sex marriages, although, at first, she was said to have somewhat supported the civil union option, proposed by some as a compromise between liberals and conservatives on such a rather controversial issue. However, she would later come out in full support of same-sex marriages, even going so far as to decry the infamous 2008 California Proposition 8 as "unconstitutional" and "un-American".
In 2011, with the fall of longtime Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi from power as a result of the Arab Spring, Kennedy came out in support of the NATO-led intervention in the country on the side of the anti-Gaddafist National Transitional Council, arguing that "unlike 2003 (Iraq), the situation in Libya is a united front, and one with a clear objective, that is to assist in the establishment of a fully democratic government in such a turbulent country". However, in that same year, she notably broke with President Obama, as a result of the latter's decision to renew the controversial Patriot Act, which Kennedy described as having "served its time a few years ago" and argued that it "should be repealed immediately in the face of more pressing concerns other than those prevalent in the previous years". The following year, rumours arose which claimed that Kennedy herself was being considered as a potential replacement to sitting vice-president Joe Biden for the 2012 presidential election. However, Kennedy herself promptly rejected the rumours, insisting that she wished to remain as senator for "a little while longer". Soon afterwards, Biden himself was officially nominated once more as running mate by President Obama for the election, thereby retaining his seat as vice-president, which he did so after the Democratic ticket defeated the Republican ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.
Upon being re-elected for a second term as Senator, Kennedy came to adopt increasingly progressive stances on certain issues, while otherwise retaining a moderate stance on others. For instance, on the Israel-Palestine issue, despite largely retaining her support for Israel, as evidenced through her opposition against the BDS movement meant to economically weaken the Israeli state, Kennedy nonetheless proved somewhat critical in regards to several policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which she described as "counterproductive in dealing with the Palestinian aggression from the other side of the conflict". She is also a strong supporter of the 1967 borders, which officially grants the enclave of Gaza and the territory of the West Bank to Palestine, and the rest to Israel, which currently forms the country's official borders, minus the occupied territories nearby. Meanwhile, in a stark departure from her previous stance on recognising Jerusalem as the Israeli capital city, Kennedy has since called for the holy city to be officially designated an "international zone with no restrictions to both Muslims and Jews who wished to enter and leave the city at any given moment".
Meanwhile, on the issue of gun rights, Kennedy also came to adopt a more moderate stance overall, having previously supported a renewal of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. However, she has since largely come out in support of "common sense background checks", while also particularly criticising the National Rifle Association, which she once described in a Senate speech as "the gun rights equivalent to a tabloid magazine". She has also consistently advocated for either an abolition or reduction in the use of the death penalty, arguing that it should be largely restricted to "the most heinous crimes only", while also claiming that "rampant use" of the death penalty was "financially imprudent", a statement perceived by many to have been an attempt to court fiscally conservative lawmakers from both the Democratic and Republican parties.
Throughout the entirety of her senatorial career, Kennedy has voted in line with President Obama's stated position at a rate of roughly 95%. Meanwhile, a study by The Lugar Center, founded by former Senator Richard Lugar, has consistently ranked her as being among the ten most bipartisan senators throughout her first and second terms.
2016 Presidential Election
On May 29, 2015, roughly a month after the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders had announced their respective runs for the Democratic nomination, Kennedy her announced her own decision to also partake in the race, by way of a short video commemorating the 100th posthumous birthday of her father, the late John F. Kennedy.
After initially losing the respective Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, Kennedy would score the first of her many series of victories in the race by winning both the Nevada caucuses and the South Carolina primary. In the case of the following "Super Tuesday" period, she proceeded to win the states of Arkansas, Georgia, Massachussets, Texas, Virginia, Colorado, and Minnesota, consequently leading to assumptions that the New York senator would ultimately win the race. This initial streak of victories was soon followed by wins in Nebraska and Maine. On March 8th, she narrowly won Michigan in a close three-way race between herself, Clinton, and Sanders, although, she would go on to lose Mississippi, which she lost to Clinton with a 3-point margin.
On March 15th, the date of the second "Super Tuesday" primaries, Kennedy once more exhibited a relatively strong performance, winning the states of Florida, Illinois, Missouri, and Ohio, followed by the states of Washington, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Utah. She also won her home state of New York (which she shares with Clinton herself), thereby further dealing a powerful blow to her opponent's campaign. Then, for the third "Super Tuesday" primaries, she was narrowly defeated in Pennsylvania, but soon rebounded with victories in both Delaware and Maryland. Then, over the course of May, Kennedy proceeded to win the states of Oregon and Kentucky, which, by this time, has led most observers to strongly conclude her as the presumptive nominee, with a tally of twenty five states won, far ahead of her two rivals. Meanwhile, subsequent victories in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico consequently led to the withdrawal of Hillary Clinton, who, while doing so, opted to endorse Kennedy for the presidency, therefore leaving her with the Vermont senator, Bernie Sanders. Eventually, triumphant victories in California, New Jersey, Montana, North Dakota, and lastly, South Dakota, would precipitate an eventual Sanders withdrawal, which occurred in the same exact fashion as Clinton's, in which the Vermont senator also took to endorse Kennedy. Soon enough, a final and uncontested victory in the District of Columbia would ultimately confirm Kennedy as the apparent Democratic nominee.
Then, at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Kennedy was officially nominated as the clear Democratic nominee, becoming the first woman in American history to be nominated as a nominee for a major political party, along with her running mate, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, who was nominated the following day. Therefore, her opponents in the general election included Republican Donald Trump, Libertarian Gary Johnson and Jill Stein of the Green Party.
Throughout most of 2016, the inflammatory rhetoric and divisiveness of Donald Trump, which stood in stark contrast with her relatively positive and uncontroversial character, and her own name recognition as a member of the Kennedy family allowed her to easily hold a significant lead over her Republican opponent in most polls conducted nationwide, with the Associated Press, by way of a poll, predicted that Kennedy would win by a 56% share of the vote, even higher than that of her father's when the latter defeated Republican Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election with a 49.72% share of the vote over Nixon's 49.55%. Following the publishing of the infamous Access Hollywood tape by the press, Kennedy was then further predicted to win at roughly 58%, as her Republican opponent was met with immediate controversy and condemnation from both the Democratic and Republican parties. In late July, a convention bounce resulting from the 2016 Republican National Convention was able to slightly narrow Kennedy's lead, although most polls still indicated a firm victory for the New York senator. Soon, Kennedy would receive her own convention bounce at the opposing 2016 Democratic National Convention. In September 2016, the best-selling book, Fifty Years On was published together by Kennedy and Booker, outlining their vision in the case of a future Kennedy presidency.
On November 8, 2016, Kennedy, with 353 electoral votes decisively defeated Donald Trump, who otherwise only earned approximately 178 electoral votes. By at least 4:50 a.m., with the state of Georgia called for Kennedy, and with the New York senator having already secured the battleground state of Florida, the total amount of Kennedy's projected electoral college votes stood at 274, thereby leading most media outlets to declare her the winner of the election. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, who by the time that the election was called for Kennedy, was sitting with only 170 electoral votes, and in the following hours, would ultimately receive only an additional eight electoral votes, thereby bringing the final tally to 178, while on the other hand, Kennedy's number of electoral votes continued to rise with the remaining states called one by one, before finally giving her a total tally of 353 votes, just a few votes short of her predecessor, Barack Obama's win in 2008 over John McCain, while otherwise surpassing the latter's record of 332 electoral college votes in 2012. Additionally, Kennedy also surpassed the number of electoral college votes held by her father in his victory in the 1960 presidential election, which stood at 303 to his opponent, Richard Nixon's 219 electoral college votes. At the same time, she secured the highest ever popular vote amount for a presidential candidate, at 77,003,555, while Trump, despite his loss secured the second-highest amount of popular votes for a presidential candidate at 70,611,368. However, on that same day, in stark contrast to expectations and formality, the Kennedy campaign reported that Trump himself has yet to traditionally congratulate the winner of the election via phone call, to which the Trump campaign responded by alleging that the real estate mogul was "not awaken yet", and that, despite the reality, the election is "still anybody's game", which was interpreted by some to be the Republican candidate being somewhat hesitant on acknowledging the election results, rumours of which had persisted since the real estate mogul made public his skepticism and doubt over a defeat of his in the election during the presidential debates.
Throughout the following days or so, tension immediately began to rose, as supporters of Donald Trump, aided by the fact that the real estate mogul himself has yet to officially acknowledge the election results, began to hold marches and rallies in major locations across the country, protesting their candidate's apparent defeat, while otherwise demanding a recount in states where Kennedy had particularly won by a slim margin, which reportedly included Florida, Georgia, and the likes of the state of Wisconsin and Ohio.
By the third day since the end of the election, ever-increasing protests and rallies, some of which later devolved into riots led to outgoing President Barack Obama sending in a considerable amount of National Guard troops, with the aim of preserving the fragile peace and stability of the country. At the same time, a large number of National Guard troops, along with multiple SWAT and FBI units were subsequently stationed outside of Kennedy's New York residence. However, despite there being no direct threat to the president-elect, an order was issued by President Obama himself to "swiftly evacuate" the New York senator out of the state and to the safety of the White House in Washington D.C. with her three children, where soon after arriving there by the Marine One helicopter, the family of four were soon reportedly transferred to an underground bunker in the White House, so as to minimise any potential threats against Kennedy, particularly from supporters of Donald Trump. Later on, in an emotional interview with Axios, Kennedy recounted how she felt that she was "absolutely going to die by some criminal or assassin just like my father or my uncle Bobby". Meanwhile, just a day after her inauguration, a special ceremony was held in which Kennedy herself awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to those who had personally accompanied her to the safety of the White House from her home in New York, and those who had been tasked in guarding her residence prior to her departure from there. This was in turn followed by a televised speech in which she thanked "all the brave officers who proudly and fearlessly served day and night to ensure that American democracy will remain as strong and ever, and that the people's will would always be heard and would never be silenced".