The mood was calm and sober on the Howard University campus as people waited to hear vice-president Kamala Harris’s concession speech on Wednesday afternoon. An area that is usually the central hub of campus life, the Yard, was mostly filled with Harris campaign staff, media and members of the public.
Harris appeared about 25 minutes after her scheduled time and opened with a message on unity, building community and coalitions. “My heart is full today,” Harris said. “Full of love for our country, and full of resolve.”
Harris urged young people to acknowledge their power, to believe in the impossible and to commit to organizing and mobilizing. And she encouraged her supporters to embrace “the light of optimism” and of service.
“Hear me when I say that the light of America’s promise will always burn bright,” she said. “As long as we never give up and as long as we keep fighting.”
Harris’s supporters expressed shock, grief and disillusionment as they reflected upon the harrowing hours since the election was called for Republican candidate, Donald Trump. Instead of feeling galvanized to build resistance movements, voters said that they needed time to rest and reset before thinking of next steps after the election.
“It revealed to me the heart of us as a nation,” 47-year-old Janeen Davis, a county government employee said. “It’s taking my pride away. Being an Indigenous person, it hits me hard. Our democracy is built upon our Indigenous ancestors … and so much has been torn from the Indigenous community, and so now that that’s at stake, it’s like there’s nothing left.” Davis said that she was in fear of political violence from Trump supporters if his opponents resist his presidency now. “My personal opinion is because of how the transition happened last election,” Davis said, “the best thing that we can do is be still right now.”
Patricia McDougall, a 63-year-old staff member at Howard University, said that she felt sad. She believed that, had she won, Harris would have supported immigrants and helped fight for women’s reproductive rights. “As an immigrant myself [from Belize], I feel bad about the people who are going to be left behind,” McDougall said. “I thought that she was going to move the needle and help people.”
As an ambassador for the United Nations, McDougall expressed anxiety about Trump’s foreign policy moves in the future, adding that his “mouth destroys him.
“We are all on edge to see what he’s going to do and how he’s going to do.”
Davis was similarly concerned that Trump’s presidency may spell disaster for foreign relations. Since exit polls revealed how divided the electorate is, Davis warned: “A divided nation can’t stand, so it’s going to make us more susceptible to outside threats.”
Despite her defeat, voters said that they were proud of Harris and her campaign team for what they accomplished in the months since inheriting Joe Biden’s campaign after he dropped out of the race during the summer. Nadia Brown, a political science professor at Georgetown University and a fellow Howard University alumna, had watched the election results pour in from the campus on election night. Returning to the scene after Harris’s crushing defeat was sobering, but she was in a place of acceptance and didn’t feel sadness.
For Brown, she said that the election results posed “larger questions to ask around what the Democratic party needs to do to maintain the core voting bloc”. She observed that the concerns of young people and progressives who opposed Israel’s war on Gaza where more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed since last October were not taken seriously. Brown also called into question the Democratic party’s strategy, saying: “The base was not shored up before moving to swing voters, which were the Republicans who were never Trumpers.”
Looking toward the future, Brown said that the Democratic party must reconsider its outreach strategy. “Black women in particular did a great job. I have no regrets or hard feelings about the way that Black women showed up,” she said. “But now it’s how [does the party] reach some of the other folks.”
Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage
• This article was amended on 7 November to correct elements of the reported wording of Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech.
