This is part of a series, This American Carnage, from Charlie Lewis, who is reporting from America on the 2024 US presidential election.
Touching down in Washington on election day morning, the plane swoops so terrifyingly low as it approaches Ronald Reagan Airport that you feel you could rake your fingernails over the buildings if the windows were open, the plane’s tail skimming off the glowing Potomac River. And as the plane heads towards the gate, you see, across the Potomac to the north, creeping above the bank of trees, the dome of the Capitol building.
The Capitol and most other Washington landmarks today are surrounded by metal fencing and armed guards, and local businesses have been boarding up their windows. But you wouldn’t know it when walking through the pleasant, leafy suburbs leading downtown where the Capitol, Senate building and Library of Commerce are housed. Elsewhere, hoax bomb threats have led to the evacuation of polling centres, but here, according to a local journalist I speak to, everything’s been “pretty quiet”.
It’s hard to imagine that an election played out at this pitch could be met with anything other than feverish passions — there was a bit of that energy at the election-eve Harris rally in Pittsburgh the night before. When I ask people what they’ll do if the Republicans win, they don’t just grimace — they bury their faces in their hands, go silent. More than one person says they’d consider leaving the country.
But everyone I’ve talked to also knows at least a few people who aren’t voting, or voting for the other side. Particularly, it has to be said, the Democrats I talk to. The only thing everyone agrees on, though the reasons differ, is that things cannot continue as they are.
That’s Shawn’s take, a former army guy I spoke to earlier that day as he drove me to the Pittsburgh Best Buy. After his service, he was an engineer. He now works three jobs after Joe Biden ended the Keystone pipeline project (“so I don’t want any more of that in the country”). He doesn’t believe all immigrants are criminals and rapists (“I’m sure most of them just need help. I’m just not sure I want our country paying for it before they take care of their own people”). But he still badly wants Trump to win — he blames the Democrats for the loss of his Keystone job, wants the borders under control — and in an aside says, “We gotta stop the wars. I was deployed, in Somalia, I fought in a war…”.
Whatever most outlets heard in Trump’s crack about former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney facing a firing squad, I suspect Shawn, and possibly a lot of people like him, heard something else.
The question I haven’t quite been able to answer in my time here is whether anyone is actually excited about their candidate. Siloed media consumption had convinced everyone I spoke with that the candidate they weren’t voting for was a compulsive, brazen liar with no policy position, which doesn’t strike me as the same thing.
Asking around at the Harris rally, I heard the Democratic nominee was “impressive”, “intelligent”, “had some balls”, had hit the ground running and had turned around a floundering and doomed campaign back in July. “It’s about time a woman got the job” came up a bit too. But there wasn’t quite the expected inspiration or warmth, the “imagine what this would make possible” response to a woman of colour becoming US president. The overwhelming vibe was that, quite simply, she needed to win. Excitement didn’t really factor.
Then again, the people in the front rows of Harris’ rally might have felt differently. They’re the ones who stood through the six-hour extravaganza, that full US politics treatment that you don’t get so much in Australian politics, eight speakers picked from the local political leadership, a symphony of accents and rhythms to the voices, the sheer variety of backgrounds branded on the tongue.
There was Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey’s melodic rasp (“We can’t just talk about it, we gotta be about it”), Lieutenant Governor Austin Davis faintly Seth Rogen-y wonkishness, Senator John Fetterman talking in that slightly strained way of his, as well as a smattering of celebrities. Then a tribute to Quincy Jones followed by Cedric the Entertainer, speaking sweetly and amusingly and out of nowhere, before finally — as Beyonce’s “Freedom” shoots from the speakers like a firehose — you realise he’s introducing Harris. The cheers are high and sincere, and all in black, and she walks to the podium.
“It is time for a new generation of leadership,” Harris tells the crowd, still on a high from her arrival. I realise that not one speaker has uttered the words “Joe Biden” the entire night.
“When we fight…” she starts, pausing for the response, “we win.” The crowd roars along. Her speech is short and relatively modest, with lots of administration about where and how to vote, about calling everyone you know to vote, to make a plan to vote. Her voice is understandable showing signs of wear after a whirlwind campaign of just over 100 days, but she wields it effectively, saving it for the big lines. “You’re all here because you love your country. And when you love something, you fight for it.”
At one point she has to stop, because a portion of the crowd is chanting, and I wonder if it’s in protest, but she stops and beams:
“I love you back,” she says, half off-mic.
That’s the people filling the front rows of the event. This, in all my years covering elections, is easily the youngest crowd I’ve ever seen at a rally or political event. Could that swing it? Those first-time voters, particularly young women, not being picked up in traditional polling, who might conclusively send it her way? You get the sense the Harris camp thinks it might — every speaker has mentioned reproductive rights, and it was the biggest cheer they got.
Harris herself was good. Not epochal, but good, which is all she needed to be. The event, as with everything else that’s been happening in the election for the past few weeks, is just about getting the faithful to the polls and to bring people with them. The excitement fits the “nauseous optimism” the campaign has taken to calling its views on the poll.
Then she’s off, again to Philadelphia, then North Carolina and Washington. Katy Perry is revealed as Harris’ pop star surprise, and as smiling, bopping attendees shuffle out, she sings “The Greatest Love of All”. The chorus is slightly flat. One would hope for Harris’ sake that expecting Taylor Swift and getting Katy Perry isn’t a metaphor for anything.
Stay tuned as Crikey hits the bars on election night…
