There’s a darkness on the edge of town following Donal Trump's victory

She knows many people will disagree. She knows they might think her crazy. But she has renewed hope regardless. And we now know that in America, she is very much not alone.

“I am very supportive of immigration ... but legal immigration,” she says. “There have been instances of people coming here who are on various watch lists. People who have done terrible things. Murdered, raped …”

Does she think Donald Trump will introduce control over that? “Yes.” Too much control? “I don’t think that. There are judicial checks and balances in this country. He is not a one-man totalitarian [state].”

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Dawson returned home to Pennsylvania about a year ago after living in Scotland for four years. I don’t need to tell her how many of those she left behind across the Atlantic will view Trump’s victory, but she’s happy to explain her reasons. “When I left America, I was making much less money than I am now and I was okay. Now that I’m back and earning more I am struggling … very much struggling. The prices of so many things have literally doubled since I left. When I go to the shops and it’s $100 and I’ve only got a few things ...

“I look at my parents who are retired and are on social security. They are really, really struggling. My dad worked very hard all his life and had a good pension plan but it’s not enough. I don’t know what happened. I do know that inflation is not unique to the USA. I’m not that naïve. I don’t know exactly what changed. Everything has gotten much more expensive – I think Covid had a big part in it. I do know we are importing a lot more and Trump had tried to [encourage] buying American.”

It’s always been the economy, stupid. Most of the immediate analysis of the election suggests that is true. Millions of Americans were willing to overlook racism, a felony conviction, the various pending criminal charges, the refusal to accept the last election result, the storming of the capitol, two impeachments and the dark, often violent rhetoric because, well, the economy.

It is Wednesday afternoon before Kamala Harris concedes defeat. By this time, it is clear that Trump has won at least three of the seven key swing states, including Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin. Just days after Harris had staged a huge celebratory rally in Philadelphia, her short campaign has ended in disaster and, for many, despair.

BOXING SMART

IT is two days before the American election that has effectively split the country into two equal halves and, under the watchful eyes of Rocky Balboa’s statue, the stage is literally taking shape outside Philadelphia’s Museum of Art for Kamala Harris’s last, huge rally. Excitement is rising in the historic city which was America’s capital for 10 years in its earliest days as an independent nation. It sits at the heart of Pennsylvania, one of a handful of key states which will determine the political leadership of the world’s strongest superpower. Over the final weeks of the campaign, it has come to be recognised that whoever wins Pennsylvania will likely win the presidency.

On this bright and unseasonably warm Sunday, an army of workers is erecting the lighting rigs, the PA system and the massive stars and stripes at the sides of a stage which will welcome a series of A-list stars to pledge their support for Harris’s bid to enter the White House. Rumours are rife that Taylor Swift will be one of them. Bruce Springsteen, John Legend and Alicia Keys have already appeared at Harris rallies, but Monday’s could be the biggest yet.

Above the busy scene outside the museum rise the famous Rocky steps. Tourists and visitors mimic Sylvester Stallone’s iconic run up those steps in the first of the series of films as loved ones record their efforts. Row upon row of toilet portacabins stretch as far as the eye can see. For now, it’s a relaxed scene, watched languidly by locals and visitors on the ground.

“The rally will be good for Philadelphia,” says one woman preparing to head home from the park with her family. But she’s not willing to say where she’ll be putting her cross on Tuesday. “Don’t ask me my age and don’t ask me how I’ll vote,” she laughs. “But what I want right now is some conclusion.”

A young couple waiting in the queue to have their photographs taken at the Rocky statue explain: “I’m from Virginia and my boyfriend is from Colorado, but we live in Philadelphia for work. His parents are here visiting us this weekend. I’m 100% voting for Kamala. We all are.”

Next to them is Jonathan Alves, visiting Philadelphia from Boston. “I’m a Kamala supporter,” he says. “And I’m feeling optimistic. In Boston, it’s going to be a landslide victory for Kamala Harris. Massachusetts does the right thing.

“But I think Trump is going to declare victory when there is no victory. His supporters are going to show up in the capital with weapons and they will go to the US military. We are going to see people run over by tanks. But then things will be restored and Trump will go to jail and we will move on. Kamala is going to bring us together. The UK is an older, more established set of countries and they learned from their mistakes and voted Boris out.

“The US is a child country and makes mistakes. Trump has been our biggest.”

Later, Kamala will stand on the nearby stage telling a huge crowd swelled by the presence of Lady Gaga, Oprah Winfrey and Ricky Martin: “It’s good to be back in the city of brotherly love, where the foundations of our democracy were laid.”

Harris isn’t quite the equivalent of Rocky Balboa in this drama. She’s hardly an underdog. The polls put her and her and Donald Trump at pretty much equal pegging. At this point, there’s no clear indication of who is more likely to reach the 270-seat threshold required to win. But the talk is about how much faith we can put in the polls. Past experience suggests not much.

No-one can be sure, for example, how many people are telling the truth when asked about their voting intentions. How many are like the cab driver who takes us from the airport to the city? He is one of the 78 million who voted before election day. He voted for Trump but showed us a picture of himself with his wife campaigning for Harris. In fact, he says, he donated $500 to the Harris campaign. But the truth is, he can’t stand the thought of a woman in the White House. Trump may be crazy, he says, but he’s good for business.

Why the lies? There’s no way his wife would understand, and he’s not prepared to have the argument. “Happy wife, happy life,” he says.

It’s a weird counter take on one of the surreal slew of TV election ads that reflect a widespread feeling of disquiet at women coming under pressure from their husbands to vote Trump. It shows them secretly voting for Harris as a voiceover by actress Julia Roberts tells them: “You can vote any way you want and no-one will ever know,”

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TV election ads in the land of the free are strange and getting stranger as the race intensifies as voting day approaches. Mudslinging reaches new levels. A hysterical (in both senses) Republican diatribe that blames Harris for almost everything in the country and the world, including being “on the brink of World War Three”.

On and on the election debate rages on television. Fox wheels out ever more extreme Trump supporters while CNN hosts lose their shit as clearly untrue claims by Trump become ever wilder and more unhinged. He should never have left the White House, he says. He cannot lose … unless the election is rigged. There is an establishment conspiracy to keep him out of power. There are no limits on the former president’s paranoia.

SYMBOLS OF FREEDOM

“I MUST go among the Grave ones and talk Politicks.”

The Benjamin Franklin quote is displayed on a wall within the pavilion where a small crowd queues to see the Liberty Bell in a slightly messy open space in downtown Philadelphia. In truth, there is little talk of politics here today. The security guard says it’s a much smaller queue than is normal in the pavilion, slightly odd given that the country is going to the polls in two days. Perhaps it’s fatigue with endless speculation about the result when the general consensus is that it’s way too close to call. Perhaps it’s the fact that most of the people here are tourists and therefore not directly involved in the electioneering. Everyone we talk to says they are exhausted by the whole thing. Whatever the reason, no-one seems overly emotional about seeing the iconic symbol of freedom, bar one man’s half-hearted fist in the air after a family photograph.

The Independence Mall across the road is deserted. Inside is the office of The Philadelphia Inquirer – one newspaper which announced its support for Harris weeks before the controversy over The Washington Post’s owner and CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos stopping that newspaper from doing the same. Today, the Inquirer office is closed. Presumably the staff are working from home. On a nearby lamppost, a poster urges: “Swing the election. Fuck Trump. Don’t let him win.” As if to provide balance, an elderly woman swathed in heavy clothing despite the relative heat suddenly shouts out: “Vote Trump, not K-K-K Kamila.”

The scene does not quite reflect the iconic status Philadelphia holds in the history of America. A city full of statues of those who helped lay the foundations of democracy as Harris will later refer to in her speech. That night, the city’s responsibility to help defend that democracy is underlined at a Kamala campaign in a packed gay club.

The My So-Called Life actor and gay rights activist Wilson Cruz gives a passionate speech about his community’s fight to create “a place where we get to be who we are, where we all get to love who we love, where we are all respected. A place where each and every one of us can live with the kind of dignity we deserve because we are human beings.

“So many people have sacrificed so much. People have died. Let’s make no mistake about it. People have bled, they have sacrificed in our community, they have given their lives so that you and I can live the kind of lives that we are living today. Let’s not forget that it was not long ago that we could not marry each other, when that was looked down upon, when we were made to feel shame for even thinking of it.

“Don’t think that can’t be taken away from us. The way that we keep that from happening is by showing up and doing something. If you can’t campaign yourself, get someone else to do it for you”.

STUDENT VOICES

AS election day dawns, there is no shortage of people showing up and doing something at Penn State University in the heart of Pennsylvania. The hub in the middle of the campus is one of the biggest polling stations in the state and along with the others it has been open since 7am. It’s busy with voters and campaigners. The Swifties For Kamala stall seems to be doing good business.

The students we speak to are appreciative of the university’s efforts to encourage them to vote. “Having somewhere to vote on campus is huge,” says Katy Hill, a freshman student from New York. “In Pennsylvania, I think it’s really important that you should vote as it’s a swing state. I remember walking around campus during [university] registration and everyone was changing their registration so that they could vote here.”

The Vice President hasn’t visited the campus, unlike her opponent. Donald Trump staged a rally here.

Standing chatting amid the hubbub is Paul Takac, whose election to become a Pennsylvanian member in the House of Representatives in December 2022 indicated a shift from Republican to Democrat in some rural areas of the state. He’s seeking a second term and it’s fair to say he’s feeling cautiously optimistic.

(Image: PA)

“I’m seeing very high turnouts here and hearing of high turnouts from colleagues in Philadelphia. Democracy is stronger with higher turnouts and Democrats tend to benefit from them,” he says. He puts his own success in 2022 down to “trying, showing up, working with people and caring about people in the community”. In this most divisive of elections, he remains proud of winning support from Republicans. He will learn later he has held on to the seat.

He’s all too aware, however, of the threat Trump poses to democracy in the USA. “This is about people who value principle and people who value power,” he tells us. “There is one side who want power to be absolute, enduring and unchanging. They love power more than they love the principles of our democracy – to the extent that they may stop having fair elections which include as many people as possible. They want to exclude those people they do not want to take part.”

For Michael Berkman, the director of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy on the Penn State campus, this election is critical for democracy in America. He’s concerned at the way Donald Trump slips so easily into lying. “I think he is intentionally trying to create an environment where people have no idea what to believe so that all truth is just completely subjective. His debate with Biden captured that. He threw so much out there that was simply not true that the poor guy  had no way of knowing how to even respond.

“I think for years now he has been trying to erode public confidence in elections. Even before the 2016 election [when Trump beat Hillary Clinton], he was talking about if he lost it was proof it was rigged. If it’s close this time, he won’t accept the result. We’ve been pretty invested in talking about the danger to democracy of not accepting an election result.”

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Many of those we talked to were expecting Republican challenges to the fairness of voting in different areas. To some extent those fears were justified. When we talked to State College mayor Ezra Nanes on election day, he was driving to Bellefonte in response to a move by a Republican senator to exclude Americans living abroad. Nanes, a Democrat, had no official jurisdiction over the case but acted after some of those facing exclusion asked for his help. The move was later withdrawn.

A voting site in Bellefonte was evacuated by local police after being stormed by “disruptors” on election night. Reports said multiple people burst into the Centre County election office in the town. They were later allowed back in.
There were also complaints over some ballot papers in Pennsylvania being printed slightly off-centre and which were therefore not recognised by the scanning machines used to count votes. 

THE UPSIDE DOWN

IT is supposed to be an election “watch party” but few of the guests venture into the room where a flat-screen television broadcasts a stream of bewildering figures. It’s hardly surprising that they are more interested in the delicious food than TV analysis which at this stage reveals nothing more than one fact – it’s too early to tell.

The hostess tells us that this is not a bipartisan crowd. If the result goes the wrong way – and surely there is no need to spell out which way is the “wrong way” – most people here will be very depressed indeed. This is the America with which we feel comfortable, at home. Polite, intelligent. Everywhere you go in this welcoming home, you are drawn into witty, good-natured conversations. The food is fabulous and the drink is flowing. Even the single self-declared Republican says she voted for Kamala.

We’ve spent the past few days in the bosom of this America. An America where women’s reproductive rights are unarguable, where caring parents of trans children demand protection for their right to live as they are, where LGBTQ+ rights are accepted as essential, as is the notion that a diverse society should be celebrated. But everyone here knows there is another America, one that is not represented here but which can almost be heard snarling outside the door. An America which feels abandoned by the Democratic party. An America which is angry.

(Image: PA)

That’s really why no-one is watching the early results on the TV. Not just because they are too early to tell us much but because they can’t altogether banish the possibility that the other America is bigger, stronger and angrier than their most disturbing dreams suggest. Even the hostess admits she is “nauseously optimistic” about the result. When the party breaks up around 11pm, casual departing glances at the TV screen reveal no good news.

The next morning we awake to find we are living in that other America. It feels like we have slipped into the Upside Down in Stranger Things. A place where our maps don’t work any more. Anna Dawson’s four years in Scotland means she doesn’t really live in this Upside Down but she understands it. Fears over placing the future of America’s democracy in Trump’s hands are not what’s keeping her awake at night. “I don’t see that as a risk,” she says. “But if we are talking about democracy, not a single person voted to make Kamala the candidate [after Biden stepped down]. There was no democratic process.

“I’m not a far-right person. I would say I’m more in the middle, with a slight lean to conservative. There is no candidate that I totally agree with on everything. But Trump is not a one-man totalitarian state. I’d agree that he has a big ego but deep down he cares about America and wants to put America first.
“I think Biden put the nail in the coffin a couple of days ago when he came out and said Trump supporters were garbage.”

Perhaps Bernie Sanders, the senior senator who sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020. was right when he said as we prepared to leave: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”

The National’s founding editor Richard Walker is a teaching associate at the University of Strathclyde University. He travelled to Pennsylvania with fourth-year journalism students at the university, Sophie Smith and Chloe Ballantyne, with the support of the University of Strathclyde Alumni Fund, the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the university and Penn State University in Pennsylvania