Reflections on the 2024 Presidential Election

Crestfallen. Shellshocked. Livid. Disgusted.

These are just a few of the emotions I’m feeling the day after waking up to the news that we lost Pennsylvania and, in turn, the presidential election.

Mark Twain wrote that history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes. And in that vein, in between fits of sobbing, I’ve reflected on this election cycle and on 2016, as well as (backing up much farther) 2004, the first presidential campaign cycle on which I worked.

But let me back up.

I was destined to be a political junkie. My earliest political memory was of watching the 1992 election results. It had been a hard year for us: my parents had just gotten divorced and we moved, and we didn’t have much money. But at that moment, things were feeling possible. I enjoyed being very authoritative, and I giddily ran around my elementary school “informing” people that Bill Clinton had won the presidency. The teachers were nice enough to indulge me in my belief that I was the official purveyor of election news. I didn’t know policy details, but I knew it was a good thing.

Fast forward a few years, and a few trips to the principal’s office over incendiary op-eds about George W. Bush, the first campaign I worked on was that of Howard Dean. I, along with my mom and members of the local Democratic club, sat at a café in Walnut Creek, CA and wrote postcards to Iowa voters, encouraging them to lend their support to him. That went well. Then I did a little canvassing for John Edwards. (We’re not going to go there now.) Once Super Tuesday rolled around, I threw myself into the Kerry campaign, from making calls to helping with voter registration and visibility to midnight button making. We turned Contra Costa County from purple to blue (and it’s stayed blue), but we went to bed on November 2 pretty sure that we had lost Ohio and, in turn, the election. I cried myself to sleep, cried through my classes the rest of the week, and then I applied to a handful of colleges in swing states where I could make a difference. And I turned my attention to the 2006 midterms (though worked on a couple of off-cycle campaigns in the meantime, both of them successful).

In 2008, I supported Hillary Clinton, for whom I have voted every time she’s been on my ballot. But when Barack Obama secured the nomination, I was off to DC for my final full semester of college, spent evenings and weekends phonebanking and canvassing in northern Virginia, and then got hired for the home stretch in North Carolina, which we won by 14,000 votes. And boy did it feel good. So good that I blew off grad school to help out in the home stretch of the 2012 cycle in Pennsylvania, which we also won.

Then 2016 happened. I was a new professor and was not at the time comfortable sharing my own political views, despite teaching on constitutional law and public policy issues that are hotly political. I’m not sure that my students would have been able to glean my leanings at all until, say, October 2016, when I was in a position to donate money but not time. And standing at the Javits Center on November 8, 2016 with one of my two closest friends, everything fell apart.

As a woman, as a rape survivor, as someone who relies on quality health care access, it was the biggest gut punch I’d experienced since Bush v. Gore, except I was (regrettably) able to fully process that Americans simply did not care about the safety of women, let alone the protection of racial minorities and immigrants. Discriminate to your heart’s content as long as taxes get lowered, and call it limited government.

I am proud to say that I was on the frontlines fighting against Donald Trump’s bigoted and antidemocratic impulses. I spent the night before the inauguration marching down Central Park West toward Trump Hotel, fearful for the future of democracy. But I marched against the Muslim ban. I marched for immigrant rights. I marched for science. I marched against gun violence. I marched for reproductive freedom and health care access. I got arrested marching with Black Lives Matter.

Democracy barely survived. The ACA barely survived. And many people didn’t, thanks to the Administration’s mishandling of the COVID pandemic. Most of the luck we had was due to the Administration’s incompetence managing to exceed its malevolence.

Kamala Harris was my first choice in the 2020 cycle, but I was proud to cast my vote for Joe Biden in the 2020 primary and general elections, and I continue to be filled with awe at the immense policy achievements of the Administration, from infrastructure to the economy to health care to investments in combatting climate change. It was, to quote President Biden, a BFD, the most expansive and successful domestic policy agenda since LBJ.

I proudly cast my vote for President Biden in the 2024 Massachusetts primary and was not among those initially calling for his stepping aside from the ticket. But when he did and support crystalized around Kamala Harris, I was elated. And within a week, I was canvassing.

I had just moved to Pittsburgh a month earlier and was only beginning to learn to navigate the bus system (I’m stubbornly reliant on public transportation). I was in the middle of a cancer scare, not to mention starting a new job. I let the campaign field organizer know that I had a lot of prior campaign experience, so when they had a big staff retreat in Philly, I launched canvasses out of the East Liberty and South Side offices and walked a turf myself in Squirrel Hill (which it turns out is actually hilly! Leg day!). The next weekend, north side. The weekend after that, the south side flats. And so on. I learned Pittsburgh one neighborhood at a time, one turf at a time, one conversation at a time. I registered Pitt students to vote. And in the evenings, I phonebanked, wrote postcards, and sent texts. I helped friends from neighboring states get connected to the campaign so they could know when/where to come help us out.

As October rolled around, I ramped up my involvement: I not only did more canvassing, but I became a staging location director for Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville location. From there, I trained and launched countless canvassers in the immediate area and then into the suburbs of Pittsburgh, and I walked a handful of additional turfs myself.

750 doors knocked. About 12,000 texts sent. About 3,000 postcards written. About $1,800 donated. Some phone calls made. Some new voters registered. I understood the assignment.

And we had the ground game. We knocked on nearly 1.4 million doors the weekend before Election Day. The preceding weekend, we knocked on 650,000. The weekend before that, 520,000. The weekend before that, 500,000.

We were pounding the pavement. We did all that we could do. In Allegheny County, we gave our blood, sweat, tears, and a few organs to make Kamala Harris our next president. And it simply wasn’t enough.

2016 and 2024 are difficult to sit with in different ways. In 2016, it was “coulda, woulda, shoulda.” I donated to Hillary Clinton and downballot Democrats and urged everyone around me to vote, but I wasn’t active, but rather focused more on my new career as a political scientist. So having previously gone to swing states to get the job done, but instead staying safely ensconced in Connecticut, I felt guilt and shame that I hadn’t done more. I know it’s hubris to think that I could have convinced that many people across Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to do the right thing, but we all have our delusions.

In 2024, I made up for that. I was determined that whatever happened, I would not wake up on November 6 with any regrets. I and the people with whom I worked left it all on the field.

Work could wait, because I wouldn’t be able to secure research funding through the NIH or NSF without a pro-science presidential administration. Work could wait, because I wouldn’t be able to teach on racial injustices in health at a public university if public education is threatened and faculty attacked for acknowledging the existence of systemic racism. Life could wait, because I couldn’t look in the eye my female friends (especially those who have required abortion care), my non-White friends, or my LGBTQ friends if I sat on the sidelines for the most important election in our lifetime. If I prayed, I would pray that it is not our last free and fair presidential election. I fear very much that it is.

Given my music and movie taste, I have often said that I was born in the wrong generation. Give me Springsteen, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, and Joni Mitchell, and I’m a happy camper. But I’ve wondered how I would have bounced back from experiencing the immense losses of 1968.

I do not know how I would have responded to the murders of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy within two months of each other, Bobby being one of my great heroes. But I am learning how I will bounce back from an even greater loss for our country, for our democracy, and for geopolitics more broadly.

I thought about Bobby Kennedy as I talked with my students yesterday as we collectively processed America’s re-election of Donald Trump with all of his fascistic tendencies. Just after learning of the murder of MLK, off the cuff, he reflected on Aeschylus, who wrote, “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

I was not as eloquent yesterday, looking out into the faces of a couple dozen twenty-year-olds, and I don’t know how much wisdom I had.

Was it racism and sexism? That was definitely a nontrivial part of it. There’s no denying that. Most of the people with whom I spoke over my various canvassing experiences were Harris supporters. I talked with a few Trump supporters briefly. But I talked with a handful of undecideds (or “undecideds”) who couldn’t put their finger on why they didn’t really want to vote for her, and I have my suspicions. John Lennon’s “Woman Is the Ni—er of the World” is apt.

Was it a problem with the ticket? That’s a resounding “no” from me. There were a lot of people who felt failed by the economic system and the parties, and that transcends a VP pick. And problems from the left were over Gaza. The first rule of VP picks is to do no harm, and by that measure, Tim Walz was the right choice.

Was it the fault of the campaign strategy? We can quibble with certain things here or there, but it was a really well-run campaign that had an immense field operation and put in the work exactly where it needed to. This was not 2016 all over again. And I cannot imagine a better team with whom to have been in the trenches. (I would have blasted the Access Hollywood tape everywhere so that young voters would be more aware of it, though obviously it didn’t change things in 2016.)

Is it the fault of the party? Probably in part. I’ve long expressed consternation with the Democratic Party’s inadequacies when it comes to taking effective victory laps regarding policy successes. In my 21 years of working on campaigns in various capacities, I’ve never seen a bigger disconnect between actual economic indicators and perceptions of the economy. And there are a lot of low-information voters out there, which probably accounts for the muddled voting patterns that many people had (voting for Trump and abortion rights lacks, shall we say, coherence).

At the end of the day, we have to reckon not only with the extent of bigotry in this country (anti-immigrant and anti-trans rhetoric dominated the airwaves and turned out Republican voters) but also with the frightening lack of attachment that many Americans have to democracy. And I wish that my doctorate in political science gave me more clarity as to what we make of that or how we come back from it. I don’t think we’re 1939 Germany right now, but Orban’s Hungary feels like a very realistic approximation.

Something that I’ve said more than once on social media is that Americans have a real hubris about the strength of our institutions, a lack of appreciation for the consequences of relying more heavily on norms than laws, and a lack of imagination as to how bad it can get.

Well folks, we’re here. It’s going to be worse than the first time around. A lot, lot worse. Not only will they have every lever of power, but the Supreme Court has said that the president has immunity in official acts. They have openly talked about targeting opponents. Trump has “joked” about us not having to vote again. He has openly praised Nazis and said he wants to be a dictator. I have a bridge to sell anyone who thinks he’ll cede power in 2028. And unlike Mike Pence, JD Vance said that he would not have certified the 2020 election results.

Literally no one in the next Trump Administration will defend American democracy (let alone health or anything else that doesn’t primarily benefit billionaires and themselves). And as I told my students yesterday, it’s a different coalition of Republicans in Congress. The Jeff Flakes and John McCains and Dean Hellers are gone, while flagrant insurrectionists walk the halls comfortably. And it’s safe to say that Aileen Cannon will soon replace Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. Don’t get me started on RFK Jr.

So we must be vigilant.

It’s been all gas, no brakes on the campaign. Now it’s all gas, no brakes for democracy.

One of the great joys of GOTV weekend this cycle was a group of students from Brown University who came to Pittsburgh to help deliver the state for Kamala Harris. They came straight from the airport, dropped off their luggage at the staging location I ran, and went out to canvass the suburbs, then did so again the Monday and Tuesday of election week. Their energy and enthusiasm was such a bright spot in these long days, and I’m heartened by this generation’s desire to make this world a better place, though I wish youth voter turnout were better this year, and I have a suspicion as to why it wasn’t.

One of the Brown students asked me how I’ve bounced back from election losses. This was around noon on Election Day and I was feeling good having just knocked on 102 doors with good results, so I smiled and said I didn’t think we were there this year, but I talked about the importance of finding your next fight. In 2005, that meant hopping on an off-cycle campaign (a parcel tax for my school district, then in my first semester at Bowdoin College working on an LGBTQ rights proposition campaign). In 2017, that meant being at every anti-Trump protest in New Haven and New York City, and working tirelessly to defend the Affordable Care Act, on which I ultimately relied for lifesaving care that year.

I’m still absorbing this loss, but I know that through this campaign, we’ve built a community that defies the boundaries of election season. We have built a community that is dedicated to democracy. To health care. To goodness. And we’re ready for what they throw at us.

I’m in this fight. Are you?