Tears, anxiety and no Kamala Harris: inside her election party
A party of joy and optimism turned into a glum event, with many of the vice-president’s supporters leaving early when it was confirmed she would not speak.
By the time it was confirmed that Kamala Harris would not be turning up to her own election night party, many of her supporters had already got the message and were trudging disconsolately away.
Most did not criticise her for deciding that her narrowing path to power meant it was wiser not to speak publicly until the result became clearer. But a party that had started with joy and promise had become the scene of thousands of tired, glum faces as they processed the increasing possibility that their candidate, rather than becoming the first female president, would be vanquished in the greatest comeback in American political history.
“It says a lot about how we feel about females and power,” said Victoria McGaw, as she cuddled her sleeping four-year-old daughter before starting a long drive home to North Carolina. “We are not willing to empower women in America.”
As the electoral map showed more and more Republican red, the crowd at Harris’s party at her alma mater, Howard University, in Washington, had become increasingly subdued and downbeat.
“I’m very worried,” said Claude Bailey, 70, as he headed home.
“It’s not over but it’s not looking great. People had such high expectations and it’s not panning out the way they anticipated. I was very excited at the prospect of her being president.”
“Let’s wait and see. But I am fearful,” said another woman, who did not want to give her name because she worked for the campaign. With the crucial blue wall states still in play, there were few tears. But no one among those who claimed victory could still turn up in these states did so with much conviction.
It had all started so happily. “If you want to make black history talk to me,” roared the master of ceremonies at the party in the Yard, or quad, at Howard. The crowd roared back, but not as loudly as when early projections were made by CNN that the District of Columbia, where the party was taking place, and next door Maryland, were added to Harris’s tally.
There was never any doubt about the way those two would go. But the crowd of supporters wanted to shout and scream. After months of toiling to help Harris’s campaign, the desire to let out some of the deep-tissue tension and the mounting anxiety about the result was easy to understand. You could feel the mass release when Florida was called for Donald Trump and
Harris’s supporters booed loud enough to reach Virginia. While a chunk of the crowd danced wildly in front of the DJ, the rest stood around the edges, squinting at their phones and screaming at each other to pass on, over the deafening music, whatever morsels of intelligence they had picked up about whether or not the end of their known world was approaching. The brows kept getting more deeply furrowed.
It has been little more than two months since Harris became the Democrat candidate for president. Her supporters sitting on bleachers or standing on the lawn in the quad on a beautifully balmy fall evening had poured their yearning for somebody to beat Trump into this former prosecutor from California, who had been catapulted into the race as a last-minute challenger.
“Nauseously optimistic” was the phrase that emerged from the Harris campaign in the past few days, to try to articulate that they hoped that she had momentum, but simultaneously felt sick with worry that victory might elude her.
Beverley Fields, who had run phone banks to persuade people to vote, optimistically suggested Harris would be the winner whatever the result. “She is for democracy, freedom, equality and justice, and that in and of itself is winning.”
Harris chose to host her party at Howard University because the university is her safe space. Her love of politics was kindled while studying for a degree in economics and political science at the traditionally black college. “For me, Howard is home,” she once said.
“My time at Howard shaped me into the person I am today,” she wrote in a letter to the Hilltop, the college’s student newspaper last month. Fellow alumni include Thurgood Marshall, the civil rights lawyer and Supreme Court justice, and the novelist Toni Morrison.
In 2019 Harris launched her failed campaign for the Democratic nomination at Howard. Back then she said: “This is where it all began.” And so she hoped that her roundabout and surprising journey to the presidency would reach a satisfactory conclusion here. She could not have envisaged that she would fail even to make it on to the stage to thank her supporters.
Two of those supporters were Caia Joseph and Marley Hillman, 18-year-old freshmen students at Howard University, who were nervous about the result but thought Harris would win. They could barely contain their excitement about the evening and the future.
“We have never had this situation in our country: a black woman running against a white male,” Joseph said. “She stands for so much. She represents us. I’ve never seen someone in such a high-power position that looks like me. It’s actually insane that we are here. Surreal. This is our first year being able to vote. This will be in the history books,” she had predicted.
THE TIMES
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