WASHINGTON — To watch a crowd go from unbridled enthusiasm and joy to anxiety, fear and palpable dismay is uncanny.
In my relatively short time as a journalist, I’ve had sources cry on the phone while discussing their late father or their housing struggles. Others have been annoyed, frustrated and even angry as they discussed Oklahoma’s government officials. That’s the nature of the business. The memory of their emotions lingers, and after an hour or so, it tends to fade into the back of my mind.
But to watch it happen in person, as I did at Vice President Kamala Harris’ election night watch party at Howard University, was a different feeling.
Getting into the watch party was no easy feat. The two other reporters from Gaylord News in Washington and I were denied media passes, so we waited for the public entry passes to be released. They ended up releasing on the morning of the election, and I rushed to secure a pass.
Though obtaining the passes was difficult, we chose to attend the Harris watch party rather than make the costly trek to Florida for President-elect Donald Trump’s event.
When we arrived, the line to the watch party stretched down the block. Attendees were greeted with small protests and gatherings of reporters recording scene-setting shots. Standing near the speakers was deafening, and navigating through the crowd — the majority of which was dancing — was difficult.
Despite the challenges in getting there, the excitement was unforgettable.
However, when reporters called the election results from Iowa, the atmosphere at the event changed. Among the crowd, there was hope the Midwest would swing toward Harris based on a poll by renowned pollster Ann Selzer, which many saw as a signal that Harris would secure an overwhelming victory.
The opposite was true. By midnight, crowds were leaving and hope had slowly dissipated, save for a few who remained optimistic despite the unlikely odds of Democrats winning Pennsylvania, the key to victory for the Harris campaign.
To witness such a shift in emotion in real-time, through my own eyes, was impactful.
Nearly a month later, Harris’ supporter's feelings are still in my mind.
Perhaps it is because I can understand the fear. Trump has discussed his opposition to the media and threatened the media in numerous ways. He’s gone as far as to suggest legacy media groups, such as CBS, should lose their broadcast license.
Do I believe he will follow through on these statements and sentiments? Not really. But it’d be naive to say it’s impossible.
Or maybe the emotion is still on my mind because of how women in my life reacted. Some cried, and others described their fears.
On election night, my girlfriend told me something that alarmed me. She said, because of Harris’ loss, it was as if the hope she had just found was stripped away. As she described, she had never felt a woman could break the hardest and highest glass ceiling: becoming president of the United States. Over the summer, when President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and was replaced by Harris, she felt it was possible.
But when Harris’ defeat became inevitable, she lost hope.
She now questions if she will ever see a female president.
Kevin Eagleson is reporting from Gaylord News’ Washington bureau this fall as part of an OU Daily scholarship.
Gaylord News is a reporting project of the University of Oklahoma Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication. For more stories by Gaylord News go to GaylordNews.net.
This story was edited by Ismael Lele, Ana Barboza and Anusha Fathepure. Geethika Kollu, Mary Ann Livingood and Grace Rhodes copy edited this story.
