James Moran writes: In November 2008 I was in New York City when Barack Obama was elected. The city felt absolutely electric. I can remember so clearly how, the day after the result, a young man serving sandwiches in a coffee shop dropped absolutely all of the behavioural codes of New York when I ordered my lunch to tell me ‘we sure have a great president don’t we?’ and then to grab both of my hands in an embrace of pure jubilation.
The antithesis of this feeling, of course, came in November 2016, when I was also in New York, and saw a devastating lack of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton. On that occasion the street vendors selling election-day merchandise, who had been there in great numbers eight years before, had vanished. Instead, the city felt resigned and flat. On the day of that election, I asked one cab driver if he felt excited about the vote, and he simply gave a sigh and rolled his eyes.
Still, at least in 2016 the election result felt like a bizarre moment. A fluke. A black-swan event. This 2024 event feels different – and more depressing – because the result, ultimately, feels willed and deliberately chosen. People have seen exactly what Trump is. They have seen it for years. And across every demographic Trump increased his numbers anyway. The people gave him a victory in the popular vote. They handed him all of the swing states. They wanted him to make America great again.
I find myself in the US again this autumn, although this time I’m working in chilled-out Boston rather than frenetic New York. The atmosphere here before the vote, I must say, felt more like 2016 than 2008. This area is a Democrat stronghold, the bluest of the blue, and yet before election day it felt as if there was next to no excitement at the prospect of the first female president, the first president of Indian heritage, etc. Most people I spoke to around here seemed more panicked about, or wearied by the thought of, what might be coming towards them down the tracks if Trump won. To be honest, in the days before the vote it felt like most people didn’t want to talk much about politics at all.
On election night I went to join some academic colleagues at the Massachusetts-Dems ‘Watch Party’, which was being held at the SoWa power station. This building is a Victorian-era hulk of industrial architecture that once powered railway transport for thousands of working people, but which has since been repurposed and turned into a gleaming conference centre in the midst of a hipster area of gastropubs and art galleries. In fact, as a metaphor for the Democratic Party it felt a little too much on the nose.
As soon as I arrived at this venue on election night, at about 8 pm, something felt a little off. I was greeted by someone who asked me if I was with the Finnish party. I said no, and was told that my British accent made them think that I’d be joining the large group of people from Finland in attendance. I was, in fact, meeting up with some Germans, but while I struggled to find those friends, I bumped into a group who had come over from France. Why were all of us Europeans here? Perhaps this election simply looks more glamorous than the distinctly less showbiz realm of Olaf Scholz and Keir Starmer.
As the evening wore on it became clear that there were, for sure, plenty of Americans here too. But they were almost exclusively very wealthy-looking and white. Or they had come with TV crews in the hope of reporting something interesting. We Europeans certainly outnumbered any group of colour. As I stood there, in this beautiful venue, I began to wonder. Has electoral tourism to the US become a thing now? And when we see people cheering the Democrats’ speechifying, are those audiences actually US voters? Because on the evidence of what I could see, the people in the hall did not look or sound like the average Bostonian at all.
Something that also surprised me was the sheer lavish giveaway of stuff at the event, which did not cost a cent to attend. In British and Irish elections the money is always so tight that there are few events of anything even vaguely resembling opulence, and during recent cycles there has even seen a dwindling of the old cardboard signs that used to adorn lamp-posts during campaigning. Americans, however, still burnish their lawn-signs with pride. And at the Watch Party there was a profusion of election paraphernalia. Free T-shirts. Fridge magnets. Coasters. And lots of beer and very fancy food given away to the various wealthy supporters, TV crews and curious Europeans in the hall.
But what was the point in the Dems handing out all of these goodies on election night? The voting had concluded in this state hours before. Before the election there had been much boasting about the Democrats having a one-billion-dollar war-chest that they were going to use to win this thing. But perhaps, I wondered as I tucked into an elaborate cheeseboard, it was possible to have a little too much money and to not quite know what to do with it.
At quite an early point in the Boston Watch Party, a series of high-profile politicians then took to the stage. The city’s likeable mayor, Michelle Wu, heavily pregnant, gave a chirpy speech. But notably she focused on the fact that ‘Massachusetts and Boston have made our voices heard’, and – when it came to thinking about the wider election –she simply stated the obvious, that we were ‘waiting to see’. The Boston congresswoman Ayanna Pressley then entered to the music of ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’ and gave an upbeat declaration that ‘I am Black and proud’. The almost entirely white audience clapped and whooped in reply.
Then the main act, Senator Elizabeth Warren, took to the stage. She is, famously, the woman who Trump calls ‘Pocahontas’ in mocking reference – a racial slur really – about her one-time claim to Native-American ancestry. Warren spent a lot of her speech telling us that she ‘saw us’. She saw us if we were women who needed our reproductive rights defending, if we were trans, or if we were in a union. She did not, however, mention Harris at all during the speech, which felt ominous. It also felt ominous that Warren wrapped things up at such an early point in the evening. The VIP areas at the back of the hall likewise emptied out long before 10 pm. One of my colleagues wondered aloud, optimistically: perhaps there was an afterparty that they had all gone to? None of us liked to reply that Warren and other senior figures probably had access to some excellent exit-poll information, and if they had left already then that did not exactly bode well.
Senator Warren’s speech ended in an explosion of tickertape falling from the ceiling, but at that point the betting markets started putting Trump’s chances of winning at 75 per cent. By 10.30 pm this had gone up to 90 per cent. Results were now swinging against Harris so rapidly that the party at SoWa, in all honesty, felt like it had barely gotten started. The evening’s initial feelgood vibes had quickly evaporated. All hangover and no celebration.
Half an hour later, at  , the chair of the Massachusetts Dems gamely came onto the stage to tell us that the Watch Party was over and we had to leave. There were, he said, a lot of votes across the country still to be counted. He sounded forlorn. As we walked out through the gates, the TVs announced that Trump had won Iowa, a state that one influential poll had in delusional but much-fanfared style projected into Harris’s column during the final hours of the campaign.
‘Oh, should we recycle this?’ asked one of the Germans as we walked out, pointing to one of the expensive bamboo plates that had been provided for our meals, and which he was still holding in his hand. One of the venue’s staff looked at him as though he had lost his mind. ‘No, just put it in the trash with all of the others’
We all walked on past all the cars big as bars, and headed for home.
That day the temperature had peaked at 24 degrees Celsius in Boston, and despite the fact that every coffee chain had already started playing their Christmas music, the weather remained hot enough for shorts and sandals.
Trump was promising to ‘drill baby drill’. And the Massachusetts Democrats were giving away hundreds of glossy posters for an election that was lost, along with single-use wooden plates for a meal that had stuck in the gullet.
All was not well in America.
14/11/2024
