Around 11:00 p.m. Eastern Time, the crowd that gathered at Kamala Harris’s watch party at Howard University started realizing the night would end in tears. When campaign chair Cedric Richmond took the stage to announce that Harris would not be speaking that night, the crowd quickly dispersed.
"I don't know what I was thinking; it should have been clear to me that a Black woman can't win in this country," said a tearful student as she left the campus.
Ynet's Daniel Edelson talks to voters about Trump and Harris
(Video: Daniel Edelson)
Harris' campaign tried to maintain hope until the last moment, when Donald Trump was officially declared the winner of the U.S. presidential election. Campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon managed to send an email to the team saying, "We always knew our path went through Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan," just minutes before Trump's victory in Pennsylvania was announced. When it became clear that the story was over, the campaign went silent.
"Black women woke up this morning with a dream and are going to sleep tonight with a nightmare," said CNN Democratic commentator Van Jones. "But we'll have to do some deep soul-searching to understand how what were considered the strengths of the Democratic Party shifted to the Republicans."
For many Democrats, this felt like a replay of the 2016 election, only more painful this time because unlike then, there was a sense that Harris had significant momentum. "We see a chance to win in all seven swing states," said Harris campaign advisor David Plouffe before the polls opened. That feeling quickly changed.
"When we saw the scale of Trump's victory in Florida, I got déjà vu from 2016," said a Democratic strategist. "We came tonight thinking our chances were good. Our internal polls put us in a good position. It's simply unbelievable that this happened to us again. We’ll have to start all over, because it turns out America doesn’t want the optimistic vision we tried to sell it."
Liberal commentator Joy-Ann Reid noted, "This is the second time most white women in America have let the patriarchy win," and liberal commentator Elie Mystal concluded, "The last time Trump won, there was a resistance movement that helped restrain him. I don’t think that will happen again. He won clearly. This is what people want, so this is what it will be."
'Maybe there will be another Trump'
In a bar in New York, Roni, an Israeli Trump supporter, told Ynet, "I'm very happy with the victory. I feel that months of searching for every possible poll and digging into every piece of information that could decide the results are over. In my view, these are crucial elections for the future of the State of Israel and the Free World in general."
A young American added that the Democratic camp needs to understand why so many voted for Trump: "It's mainly economic issues related to the gap between rich and poor. If we understand this and can solve these problems, then I think there will be another candidate besides Trump, one who nurtures society more. If we don't do this, there will probably be another Trump."
A man watching TV at the bar commented on the Israeli issue, saying, "I actually don't think Trump really cares about Israel at all. Yes, his daughter and son-in-law are Jewish, and he did some things in his last presidency like moving the U.S. Embassy, but generally, I don’t think he cares about Israel. In this election, he tried to play both sides. Just yesterday, he was in Michigan with a Palestinian mayor of a major city, saying he would be good for the Palestinians.
"He also said he didn't think a two-state solution is feasible, and probably people on the far right in Israel and people who are the most radical on the Palestinian side probably agree with that. I don't think it's necessarily in the long-term interest of Israel. President Biden and Kamala Harris have been extremely supportive of Israel to the point where they were getting criticized and losing votes among young people in the United States who think they've been too pro-Israeli. I think Kamala Harris sincerely believes that Israel has a right to exist and wants to continue to support that."
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