The Night They Hadn’t Prepared For

Photographs by OK McCausland

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The vibe shifted sometime around 10:30 p.m. Eastern.

For several hours beforehand, the scene at the Howard University Yard had been jubilant: all glitter and sequins and billowing American flags. The earrings were big, and the risers were full. Men in fraternity jackets and women in pink tweed suits grooved to a bass-forward playlist of hip-hop and classic rock. The Howard gospel choir, in brilliant-blue robes, performed a gorgeous rendition of “Oh Happy Day,” and people sang along in a way that made you feel as if the university’s alumna of the hour, Kamala Harris, had already won.

But Harris had not won—a fact that, by 10:30, had become very noticeable. As the evening drew on, the clusters of giddy sorority sisters and VIP alumni stopped dancing, their focus trained on the projector screens, which were delivering a steady flow of at best mediocre and sometimes dire news for Democrats. No encouragement had yet come from those all-important blue-wall states, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Somewhere between Georgia turning red and Senator Ted Cruz demolishing Colin Allred in Texas, attendees started trickling out the back.

It was starting to feel pretty obvious, even then, that Donald Trump would be declared the winner of the 2024 presidential election. And soon after 5:30 a.m. Eastern this morning, he was, when the Associated Press called Wisconsin for him, giving him an Electoral College majority even with a number of states yet to declare. An across-the-board rightward shift, from Michigan to Manhattan, had gradually crushed the hopes of Democrats in an election that, for weeks, polling had indicated was virtually tied. But a Trump victory was a reality that nearly everyone at Harris’s watch party seemed to have prepared for only theoretically.

Before last night, Democrats felt buoyant on a closing shot of hopium. While Harris stayed on message, Trump had what seemed a disastrous final week: His closing argument was incoherent; his rally at Madison Square Garden was a parade of racism; he stumbled getting into a garbage truck and looked particularly orange in photos. Democratic insiders crowed that early-vote totals were favoring Harris, and that undecided voters in swing states were coming around. Then there was Ann Selzer’s well-respected poll in Iowa, which suggested that the state might go blue for the first time since Barack Obama’s presidency.

(OK McCausland for The Atlantic)

On a breezy and unseasonably warm evening in Washington, D.C., thousands of people had gathered on the grassy campus at Harris’s alma mater to watch, they hoped, history being made. No one mentioned Trump when I asked them how they were feeling—only how excited they were to have voted for someone like Harris. Kerry-Ann Hamilton and Meka Simmons, both members of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, had come together to witness the country elect the first Black woman president. “She is so well qualified—” Hamilton started to say. “Overqualified!” Simmons interjected.

Leah Johnson, who works at Howard and grew up in Washington, told me that she would probably leave the event early to watch returns with her mother and 12-year-old daughter at home. “It’s an intergenerational celebratory affair,” she said. “I get to say, ‘Look, Mom, we already have Barack Obama; look what we’re doing now!’”

Everyone I spoke with used similar words and phrases: lots of firsts and historics and references to the glass ceiling, which proved so stubbornly uncrackable in 2016. Attendees cheered in unison at the news that Harris had taken Colorado, and booed at Trump winning Mississippi. A group of women in tight dresses danced to “1, 2 Step,” by Ciara and Missy Elliott. Howard’s president led alumni in the crowd in a call-and-response that made the whole evening feel a little like a football game—just fun, low stakes.

Several people I talked with refused to entertain the idea that Harris wouldn’t win. “I won’t even let myself think about that,” a woman named Sharonda, who declined to share her last name, told me. She sat with her sorority sisters in their matching pink-and-green sweatshirts. Soon, though, the crowd began to grow restless. “It was nice when they turned off the TV and played Kendrick,” said one attendee who worked at the White House and didn’t want to share her name. “Just being part of this is restoring my soul, even if the outcome isn’t what I want it to be,” Christine Slaughter, a political-science professor at Boston University, told me. She was cautious. She remembered, viscerally, she said, the moment when Trump won in 2016, and the memory was easy to conjure again now. “I know that feeling,” she said. She was consoling herself: She’d been crushed before. She could handle it again.

Harris herself was expected to speak at about 11 p.m., but by midnight, she still hadn’t appeared. People bit their cheeks and scrolled on their phones. There was a burst of gleeful whoops when Angela Alsobrooks beat Larry Hogan in Maryland’s U.S. Senate election. But soon the trickle of exiting attendees became a steady flow. Potentially decisive results from Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were not due soon, but Michigan didn’t look good. North Carolina was about to be called for Trump.

I texted some of my usual Democratic sources and received mostly radio silence in response. “How do you feel?” I asked one, who had been at the party earlier. “Left,” she answered. Mike Murphy, a Republican anti-Trump consultant, texted me back at about 12:30 a.m: “Shoot me.”

Donors and VIPs were streaming out the side entrance. The comedian Billy Eichner walked by, looking sad, as the Sugarhill Gang’s “Apache (Jump on It)” played over the loudspeakers. A man pulled me aside: “There will be no speech, I take it?” he said. It was more of a comment than a question.

(OK McCausland for The Atlantic)

“I’m depressed, disappointed,” said Mark Long, a software salesman from D.C., who wore a T-shirt with a picture of Harris as a child. He was especially upset about the shift toward Trump among Black men. “I’m sad. Not just for tonight, but for what this represents.” Elicia Spearman seemed angry as she marched out of the venue. “If it’s Trump, people will reap what they sow,” she said. “It’s karma.”

Just before 1 a.m., the Harris campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond came onstage to announce that the candidate would not be speaking that night. The former Louisiana representative offered muted encouragement to the crowd—an unofficial send-off. “Thank you for being here. Thank you for believing in the promise of America,” he said, before adding, “Go, Kamala Harris!” The remaining members of the crowd cheered weakly. Some of the stadium lights went off.