Promise and excitement turn to jitters and dread at Kamala Harris’s watch party

In the end, Kamala Harris never took the stage at her election night watch party on the Howard University campus in Washington DC. As Americans appeared poised to return Donald Trump to power, it was her campaign co-chair, Cedric Richmond, who appeared onstage instead.

He tried to strike a note of optimism – there were still votes to be counted. But the scene had echoes of Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016, when her campaign chairman, not the candidate, came out to address supporters awaiting the result of a presidential election that many hoped would finally shatter the “hardest, highest” glass ceiling.

Richmond told a dispersing crowd that they would not hear from the vice-president until the next day. He promised she would return to campus, her alma mater to address supporters.

“We still have votes to count. We still have states that have not been called yet,” he said. “We will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken.”

The evening had begun with promise. Doreen Hogans, 50, arrived at Kamala Harris’s election night watch party at Howard University on Tuesday evening filled with cautious optimism. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled a string of pearls that had belonged to her late mother. She considered how her mother might feel that the nation’s first female and first Black female vice-president was on the cusp of history.

“She would have been so proud,” Hogans said, her eyes glistening, letting herself imagine Harris, and her signature pearls, ascend to the presidency. She took a deep breath, pocketed the necklace and merged into the crowd of Democrats assembled on the Yard.

Democratic National Committee senior adviser Cedric Richmond addresses Kamala Harris supporters at an election night watch party at Howard University on Tuesday. Photograph: Shawn Thew/EPA

The crowd that gathered was excited. The music pulsed. Members of Harris’s AKA sorority, wearing pink and green, danced together. Michele Fuller, who attended Howard at the same time as Harris, rushed into the event with a friend. “It feels unbelievable,” she said, who helped canvas for Harris in Pennsylvania.

“She’s just done so great,” she said. “And she’s more than qualified. I’m just so excited.”

All around her, students and supporters filled the lawn around the stage set for Harris to speak. Supporters danced as the music pulsed. “If you’re ready to make Black history, talk to me,” the DJ called out.

For the past 108 days since Harris’s sudden ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket, she has carried the fears of tens of millions of Americans deeply afraid of a second Trump presidency. The stakes were high, she acknowledged, agreeing at one point that her opponent met the definition of a fascist, but she promised a future unbound by the fear and anxiety of the Trump era. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” Harris said, in her closing argument last week.

Her audaciously joyful campaign unleashed a wave of pent-up excitement among Democratic-leaning voters, especially women. She had raised a billion dollars. She has centered abortion rights, framing it as a matter of bodily autonomy. She attracted high-energy crowds and endorsements from the planet’s biggest stars. And yet the race remained exceedingly, nail-bitingly close.

As Donald Trump began to carve out an expected early lead on Tuesday evening, jitters set in. But this was a crowd predisposed to anxiety.

A man leaves the election night rally for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, outside Howard University, in Washington, on Tuesday. Photograph: Craig Hudson/Reuters

Eight years after Hillary Clinton’s loss – an upset that stunned the scores of women who had assembled at her glass-ceilinged election night party in New York and covered the grave of Susan B Anthony in “I Voted” stickers – few Democrats allowed themselves to feel anything more than “nauseously optimistic” about Harris’s prospects.

Rhonda Greene, 55, of Virginia, said she woke up on the Wednesday morning after the 2016 election confident the US had elected Hillary Clinton. “Then I looked at the TV and I was in a state of shock – for at least a week,” she said. “I can’t even imagine. I won’t even allow my mind to go there.”

After all, so much has changed since then. Trump’s presidency sparked an extraordinary backlash and women marched en masse across the country. Democratic-leaning women ran for office in record numbers – and many of them won. And then the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, igniting women of all ideological persuasions. Fury over the loss of federal abortion rights again helped power Democrats fend off a red wave in 2022, and saw conservative states act to protect access. Harris’s candidacy, while unexpected, seemed like the natural progression.

“To see a woman become president, I’m like, I can do anything after that,” said Chelsea Chambers, a sophomore at Howard, arriving at the Yard, where the Frederick Douglas Memorial Hall was illuminated and the stage set for the vice president to speak.

But perhaps a lesson from 2016: there were no flashy displays of confidence at Harris’s election night party. No glass ceiling – it was outdoors at her alma mater, the place where she won her first election, freshman class representative of the Liberal Arts Student Council. Many Howard students and alumni were in attendance to support Harris, who would be the first president to have graduated from an HBCU – Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

As the evening wore on, the crowd celebrated the handful of bright spots. Angela Alsobrooks was elected to be the first Black woman senator to represent Maryland. Cheers rang out when Harris won her home state of California, hardly a surprise, but it raised her electoral vote tally, 145 to Trump’s 211.

But the night quickly swung from celebration to dread. Attendees began refreshing their phones, staring at a probability needle that increasingly pointed toward a Trump victory.

The loss of North Carolina – the first of the seven battleground states to be called for Trump – stung, but there was hardly any reaction from the crowd – just nervous sighs and scattered groans.

As the mood darkened and the campaign eventually switched the sound of the TVs off and music began to play, 2Pac’s California Love came on. But the vibes were off. Many attendees began to leave, while others debated whether to stay and hear from the vice-president herself.

In the rush toward the exit, Janay Smith, 55 and an alumna of Howard who flew in from Atlanta, said she had not yet given up hope. The blue wall states had not been called yet and that was always what the Harris campaign saw as its clearest path to victory.

But Harris had framed the election as an existential choice for the future of the country. And in the choice between electing the first female president and returning to power the former president, whose attempts to cling to power in 2020 led to an insurrection at the US Capitol and who would be the first convicted felon commander in chief, American chose him, again.

“I am a bit let down by my nation that is even this close,” Smith said.