Election eve in Washington is full of foreboding. Carpenters are still being worked off their feet, boarding up buildings. No entity is expecting to be immune.
Churches and banks, unions and charities, restaurants and hotels – all having the windows and doors built over with temporary timber – as if a hurricane were approaching. Our hotel has made a flimsy attempt to cover its limited glass frontage and a security guard has been freshly installed in the foyer; when I returned and overheard his briefing, I was equal parts relieved and alarmed.
On the streets there is a bit of a circus – preachers, protesters, journalists and photographers mingle and play up to each other. The anticipation has a soundtrack, and it is the buzz-saws and nail guns all over the CBD as the carpenters cash in.
Locals are making themselves scarce, a combination of coronavirus and election wariness keeping them off the streets. Tourists and political activists are more common, and some people combine the two. I spoke with three some women who can come from Seattle hoping to bear witness to the political death of Donald Trump.
It seems clear the heavy police presence, barricades and boarding are aimed at withstanding the anarchist and leftist protests that have teamed with the Black Lives Matter movement and created chaos in Portland, Seattle, New York and elsewhere. But Democrat supporters claim it is more about protecting against the white supremacists who they claim will flood the capital if Trump loses.
A Black Lives Matter protester pauses while hanging a new placard on a fence outside The White House. She tells me there will be violence whoever wins the election.
Alongside her, a protester with a studded mask tells me she is surprised there are not more activists turning out. She is surprised when I tell her it is election eve.
A stranger looks at the endless timber cladding on buildings and complains to me and anyone else who might hear him in these sparsely populated streets. “We are supposed to be a country that has a peaceful transfer of power,” he laments. “Remember that.”
Those on the Left blame Trump. When I suggest the violence and chaos has come from those opposed to a democratically-elected President, they admonish me for pushing a misleading media narrative.
Washington is grand and spacious, modern and historic, cold and bathed in sunlight. It is the capital of the greatest democratic success story the world has ever known, and it is battening down because it fears the consequences of an election. The buildings are being protected, and the workers and residents are staying away.
Depending on who you talk to, the streets could soon be given over to the rampaging mobs from the Left, or gun-wielding thugs from the Right. Over the next 48 hours we will find out, and we will watch as the United States of America faces another challenge to its democracy.
After all the votes are cast and counted – and that is a more complicated matter in this country than it needs to be – we will need to see leadership, not so much from the winner, as from whoever is defeated. Without the crucial loser’s consent offered publicly, with grace and strength, the nation could be destined for another four years of trauma.
The Democrats have proven themselves to be terribly bad losers. And Trump will not even countenance the concept.
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