WASHINGTON – As a big screen at Vice President Kamala Harris’ election-night gathering at Howard University showed Jake Tapper announcing CNN’s call of North Carolina for former President Donald Trump, a smattering of boos rang out.
Seconds later, Tapper and his CNN colleagues were muted, replaced on the loudspeakers with Tupac Shakur’s “California Love.”
It was a moment emblematic of the night’s off-kilter atmosphere. As Trump’s resounding victory became increasingly clear, supporters energetically danced to song after song and expressed hope that Harris might still pull off a comeback, seemingly caught between defiance and denial.
I arrived at Howard at 11:15 p.m. after spending the first portion of the evening watching cable news and relentlessly updating my X feed. By that point, the New York Times needle leaned toward Trump with a 90% chance of winning the presidency. Harris’ lone path to victory through the “blue wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin was rapidly closing, and Democrats were racing to register their post-mortems.
Biden should’ve dropped out earlier! She should’ve picked Shapiro! Why did she campaign with Liz Cheney?! This must spell the end of wokeness! They ignored pro-Palestine protesters! Why didn’t she go on Rogan?! Don’t blame the campaign, blame the voters!
Walking through the typically vibrant neighborhood of Adams Morgan, one could hear a pin drop. Those still out on the streets appeared largely oblivious to the anxiety that had gripped the surrounding MSNBC-watching households. As I drew closer to the event, I was met with a trickle — and then a herd — of somber Harris supporters making their way home.
A man gesticulated to his wife about the state of the country. A college-aged woman looked down at her phone and said, “we’re so f***ed” — her friends nodded in agreement. A lone supporter chanted “we won’t go back” through a bullhorn. An exasperated woman exclaimed, “Sherrod Brown!” in a tone that unambiguously communicated the Ohio Democratic Senator’s perilous position in his battle for re-election.
On the grass of Howard’s upper quad, the mood was distinctly different. Following the DJ’s decision to drown out CNN with an assortment of pop and hip-hop songs, much of the remaining crowd kept up a high level of energy.
Delivery driver Ryan Young, 45, was enthusiastically grooving out to “Cool It Now” by 1980s R&B group New Edition when I approached him. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Young said on attending Harris’ election night watch party. “She brought it back to the HBCUs.”
Yet, on the subject of a potential Trump presidency, Young was calm. “Everybody gotta suck it up,” he said. “He was in office before, so we know pretty much how he’s gonna do. It’s gonna be a lot of drama. A lot of people might get fired in the cabinet again. With him, you just gotta hold tight, expect the worst and hope for the best.”
Harris supporters cheer and wave American flags after CNN calls Virginia for the Vice President. (Eli Kronenberg/MNS)
When the silent CNN screen displayed calls for Democratic Senate candidates Andy Kim (N.J.) and Tim Kaine (Va.), a massive cheer went up. American flags waved by the dozen. A similar scene played out when Virginia was added to Harris’ column at 12:03 a.m., long after online Democrats began firing off X posts such as, “the first Republican popular vote victory in two decades. jesus,” as YIMBYs for Harris co-founder Armand Domalewski did.
When the television pundits’ attention turned to the Senate races in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in which the Democratic candidates were trailing at the time, the crowd went briefly silent, before the festive environment hastily returned. Even I found myself instinctively dancing to House of Pain’s “Jump Around” and mouthing the lyrics to Kendrick Lamar’s “Be Humble.”
I had seen the videos of stunned Hillary Clinton supporters reacting to her defeat in 2016 at the Javits Center in New York City. I vividly recalled the tears flowing down cheeks, the looks of utter shock and dismay. In that election, Clinton was a significantly heavier favorite than Harris, and America had yet to truly come to terms with the strength and depth of Trump’s support. Still, given the stakes Democrats had placed on this election for the future of democracy, reproductive rights and the geopolitical world order, I was surprised at how little the scene around me resembled my memory of 2016.
Richard Lange, 27, a German postdoctoral fellow at Heidelberg University currently researching history and foreign relations at the Library of Congress, told me he showed up at Howard both to take in the election results and to observe “how people think and behave.”
Lange said he thought people were struggling to let go of the optimism that had defined the Harris campaign in the week leading up to the election. “Maybe these are the last hours where Donald Trump is not president for sure,” Lange said. “So the music and the very young, very dancing, joyful atmosphere was maybe a coping mechanism.” That theory was echoed by Young, who said, “sometimes you just gotta laugh to keep from crying.”
Dancing wasn’t the only crutch on display Tuesday evening. Even after North Carolina was called and Harris clearly trailed in all seven battleground states, some held out hope that the remaining votes would overwhelmingly come down in her favor.
“I’m getting increasingly worried,” Leila Hamilton, a graduate student at Johns Hopkins studying economics, said. “But I wanna still hold a little bit of hope for the results that still have to come out.”
Meanwhile, Emilomo Unuigbe, a sophomore at Howard studying mechanical engineering, said, “I’m a little nervous, but I have faith that things are going to turn around at the end.” When asked what her biggest issues were in this election, she said she feared Harris not following through on her campaign promises if elected.
Young, for his part, said, “It’s not looking too good, but once California hits, that should be like 50 so it’ll be a little closer.” (California has 54 electoral votes).
Amidst the anxiously hopeful mood, one man stood stoic, alone, holding tight to an American flag. Eric Yang was not born in America, nor does he reside here. An Australian native who currently lives in Taiwan, Yang arrived in the country two weeks ago on a mission.
“I am a Christian, and I have been praying in Australia for about five months,” Yang said. “And then, at the end of it, God wants me to come to America during the elections to pray for America.”
Yang did not explicitly say he was supporting Harris, instead insisting that he was praying for both parties. “I just want to pray that there’s more righteousness and unity of the country, that there’s less split, and America will become a beacon for the rest of the world to enjoy the real freedom and the truth that America was built on,” Yang said.
When asked if he feared the impacts of a Trump presidency on American-Taiwanese relations, Yang said he wasn’t concerned because “God is in control.”
In many ways, Yang stuck out like a sore thumb among the crowd. He was not a Harris supporter, let alone a voter. He was not actively engaging with the results coming in, nor the music blasting all around him. He truly believed America could prosper under either candidate, so long as God led her in the right direction.
Water bottles are left behind at Howard University after Harris-Walz campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond announced that the Vice President would not be appearing that night. (Eli Kronenberg/MNS)
Yet, as the night drew to a close, it dawned on me that Yang did have one thing in common with the rest of the group. While both understood that the events of the night were out of their control, they were each unshakable in their insistence on hope as the night unraveled. There was no other way forward but to be together, to sing and dance — and to pray. They had been through this before eight years ago. They would ride out the storm again.
At roughly 12:40 a.m., Harris-Walz campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond appeared on stage. Expecting the Vice President, supporters uniformly craned their necks and took out their phones to capture the moment. When Richmond announced that Harris would not be appearing that night, thousands groaned at once, and a mass exodus ensued.
All that remained were a few supporters who stayed behind to take selfies, journalists speaking to straggling attendees, and water bottles — hundreds of plastic water bottles — strewn across the ground, crushed and empty. The party was over.
