Op-eds

Letter from Trumpland — celebration turns funereal at Democrat HQ in small-town Pennsylvania

Glen Retief staffing the nonpartisan voter support table at Susquehanna University. (Photo: Tanya Matlaga)

7 Nov 2024

Whether or not Donald Trump succeeds, and what his return to power will mean for a world facing war, climate change and ever-widening inequality, is now a question that only time itself will answer.

It’s 8pm on election day and the polls have just closed in our home state of Pennsylvania, the place analysts say is most likely to decide the US election. A dozen or so of us are gathered in Harris campaign headquarters on Market Street, Sunbury, a working-class mill town on the banks of the Susquehanna River.

A celebratory champagne bottle sits in a bucket of ice. Pizza, chips and a large white cake labelled “Harris-Walz 2024” lie on the food tables.

John, the campaign’s data guy, sits hunched over a laptop in the corner. Another laptop on the main table, in front of rows of seats, is hooked up to a projector showing CNN’s election coverage. There, already at this early hour, pundits frenetically zoom in on county after county, trying to compare reported returns with those of 2020.

Pennsylvania, with the approximate size and population of KwaZulu-Natal, knows it packs a globally outsize electoral punch.

“Isn’t it always so much fun to hear these national anchors talk so much about us?” asks Deb, a local organiser. “At election time, everyone wants to sound as though they have their fingers on Pennsylvania’s pulse.”

By contrast, many of us in the room actually do have a sense of opinion in our home state. Perhaps that’s why the feeling here seems so subdued, even anxious.

“This is going to be a long-ass football game,” says Angie, another leader. “I just need someone to put me in a coma for a day or two.” Nevertheless, still channelling football fan spirit, she shakes her fist like a cheerleader and predicts a Harris landslide: “I have faith in you, America!”

At the voter support station for students, a professor volunteer brought a pet goat, prompting jokes about ‘getting out the goat’. (Photo: Glen Retief)

Trump The Harris campaign supplied celebratory refreshments, hoping for a victory in the elections. (Photo: Peterson Toscano)

The rest of us are less sure. For weeks now, many of us in the room have been spending our weekends trying to get out the pro-Harris vote.

In my case, I have knocked on perhaps 150 or so of my neighbours’ doors. When they’ve been home, only about two-thirds of this list of likely Harris supporters told me they were definitely planning to vote for the ticket.

Perhaps a dozen told me that after voting for Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, they were now voting for Trump. So, for the past month, I’ve watched the published opinion polls showing a toss-up election with a sense of incredulity. Unless the defections to Trump are matched by corresponding crossovers to Harris, I figure the Democrats are in deep trouble.

Why, friends have asked me, are these Biden/Clinton voters pulling the lever for Trump? In fact, the refrain over the past weeks has been mind-numbingly familiar.

“Inflation has eaten away my salary. Did you know we had to cancel our annual vacation?”

“My cousin lost his job to an undocumented asylum seeker from Honduras, who was willing to work for half his salary. Yet the Democrats create sanctuary cities!”

“Do you remember how peaceful the world was under Trump?”

And over and over again, the same mantra: “She said she can’t think of a single thing she’d do different to Biden!”

For Americans in the coastal liberal enclaves, racism and especially sexism explain attitudes like these. In fact, many of them argue, The Economist has pronounced America’s economy the envy of the rich world. And they point to Trump – rambling, erratic, conspicuously ignorant. What reasons other than blind prejudice could they have for voting for that?

Glen Retief, talking to Angie, one of the leading Democratic Party organisers in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. (Photo: Peterson Toscano)

A sign supporting Harris for in the front yard of a local voter. (Photo: Glen Retief)

Yet as a heartland canvasser, the reality seems more ambiguous. Without a doubt, racism and sexism were a factor when voters talked about not understanding Harris or not being able to see her as leader of the country.

Yet the people I spoke to also seemed sincere when they spoke about feeling left behind by an economy slanted towards the rich. And although I viewed it as short-sighted, their desire to punish the representative of the incumbent administration had a certain logic.

In our conservative small town, I do not often run into Palestinian voters – people deeply troubled by the spectacle of their taxpayer dollars bankrolling civilian massacres and mass starvation in Gaza.

Nevertheless, the volunteers here at the election party all have friends in the big cities who are planning to sit out this election, because they simply can’t cross a moral red line and back a politician unwilling to say that she’d make military aid to Israel contingent on respect for Palestinians’ rights.

So then why have those of us gathered here been willing to canvass for Harris? In my own case, I simply fought too hard, as a young South African, for democracy. The thought of seeing the world’s club of democracies led by an election denier is, as the late John Vorster said about a permanent race war, too ghastly for me to contemplate.

Read more: What Trump’s victory means for you, the world and SA — seven takes from Daily Maverick writers

My fellow canvassers share similar concerns. Angie is horrified by the spectacle of women dying in parking lots because doctors are too afraid to perform medically essential abortions. Dave, a self-described “octogenarian” wearing a Marines cap, says Trump is fundamentally “silly”, performing fellatio on a microphone, and he worries about the degradation of public discourse.

For his part, Jim, sitting behind me, has simply been a Democrat all his life.

Glen Retief staffs the nonpartisan voter support table at Susquehanna University. (Photo: Tanya Matlaga)

“My parents didn’t even vote,” he explains. “But when I watched the Kennedy assassination as a kid, I thought, everyone has a responsibility to protect democracy.” He met his wife in college at a Democratic event and hasn’t looked back.

Soon, a graphic of Virginia appears on the screen. More than half the votes there have been counted, and the state is still too close to call.

“Wait,” I say. “Virginia?”

Behind me, John nods.

“Yes,” he says, now. “The night’s not going well for us.”

In response, I check on Florida, which has already been called for Trump by the networks. When I was a postgraduate student there in the early 2000s, Florida was, of course, the ultimate swing state, famously voting for Bush over Gore by a few hanging chads.

“Um, Trump won Florida by 12%?” I ask. Opinion polls had it headed to Trump, by six or seven.

And now, just like that, we sense we’ve lost. We hang up some white fairy lights, cut slices of the cake. We make small talk about funny canvassing experiences – the woman who told me she never knew who she would vote for until she stepped into the booth, the times we all got addresses wrong and ended up annoying Trump supporters.

Read more: US election analysis and live updates

At last, John, examining the patterns in the voting returns, is emphatic. “We’ve lost the presidency and the Senate,” he tells us, “and probably the House, too.” By now all his announcement brings is a collective resigned shrug.

“This is like 2016 all over again,” sighs Deb.

Which is one way of looking at it. Another, less-depressing way, is that every governing party who had to handle Covid and inflation has been turfed out of power in the past year or so – from Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives to Mokgweetsi Masisi’s Botswana Democratic Party.

It just happens that in America, because of the strange dynamics of the primary election system, the only protest candidate was a convicted fraudster, felon and ex-president who promises to deport 20 million people, deploy the army against “internal enemies” and impose tariffs that would dramatically increase the very inflation that prompted his electoral victory.

Whether or not he succeeds, and what his return to power will mean for a world facing war, climate change and ever-widening inequality, is now a question that only time itself will answer. DM

Glen Retief’s The Jack Bank: A Memoir of a South African Childhood, won a Lambda Literary Award. He teaches creative nonfiction at Susquehanna University and recently spent a year in South Africa as Fulbright Scholar.

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