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‘I think it’s over’: Democrats despair as Trump runs up the score in battlegrounds

People watch election results come in at Vice President Kamala Harris’s election night event at Howard University in Washington, on Nov. 5, 2024. | Jamie Kelter Davis for POLITICO

People watch election results come in at Vice President Kamala Harris’s election night event at Howard University in Washington, on Nov. 5, 2024. | Jamie Kelter Davis for POLITICO

Democrats are living their nightmare. Again.

As Election Day gave way to Wednesday, Democrats were beginning to reckon with the reality that the party may be in for a repeat of 2016. The Associated Press had already called two of the core seven battleground states — North Carolina and Georgia — for Donald Trump, and the former president was outperforming his 2020 margins across the map. Harris, meanwhile, was struggling to match Joe Biden’s margins across broad swaths of the country, from light-blue counties that swung towards Democrats in 2020 to deep red ones where Trump has continued to grow his leads.

And so, as the vice president’s path to the White House narrowed by the minute, Democrats’ ever-present anxiety was giving way to shock, despair and, in some cases, acceptance of an increasingly likely defeat.

“Trump will win every swing state, with the possible exception of Michigan,” said one Democratic pollster, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “I think it’s over.”

 

 

While some members of Harris’ campaign were holding out hope that ballots yet to be counted would break her way, others had begun bracing for defeat. Shortly before 1 a.m., former Rep. Cedric Richmond, a co-chair of Harris’ campaign, came onstage at her alma mater of Howard University to effectively disband what Democrats had hoped would be her victory party.

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

But “you won’t hear from the vice president tonight,” he told the dejected crowd. “You will hear from her tomorrow.”

It was a tonal shift from the campaign not long after Harris’ campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, had sent a memo to staffers attempting to assuage anxieties.

“We have known all along that our clearest path to 270 electoral votes lies through the Blue Wall states. And we feel good about what we’re seeing,” O’Malley Dillon wrote in the memo, according to a copy obtained by POLITICO.

 

 

But Democrats were rapidly losing faith that Harris could keep the party’s bulwark intact.

“I could see how she could come back in one of the three Blue Wall states,” said a top Pennsylvania Democratic official, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “But all three? I just don’t see how. I will be elated to be proven wrong.”

The warning signs for Harris began showing up even before the results from most states started rolling in. Exit polls showed Trump making inroads with Black men in North Carolina and in Georgia, which the Republican wrested back from Democrats later in the night.

Harris also underperformed nationally with Hispanic voters and young voters compared to Biden in 2020, exit polls found. And even in deep-blue areas, Trump managed to make gains — significantly improving his margin in his former home of New York City.

It “feels more like 2016 than 2020,” said Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat.

“That’s what’s troubling,” he added. “Those of us that had hoped for a resounding repatriation of Trump, we’re left to hope for a nail biter through the Blue Wall.”

Not every Democrat is despairing.

“Everybody fucking relax,” Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow chided her fellow Democrats. “There’s still a ton of votes to get through.”

But elsewhere, the mood was growing grimmer by the minute. Before the crowd at Harris’ campaign party dispersed, a clip of Beyoncé’s “Freedom,” which the vice president has used as her walk-out song at campaign events, was greeted with groans. Attempts to start “Kamala” chants fell flat.

And, in a callback to the beginning of Harris’ campaign, one Democratic operative wondered: “Is it brat to lose an election?”

Author: LISA KASHINSKY, ELENA SCHNEIDER, HOLLY OTTERBEIN, IRIE SENTNER, MIA MCCARTHY and HAILEY FUCHS

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