A crowd funnels into the vast Salomon DECI auditorium for what they have waited years, months, weeks, and days for. Election night is upon us. Students nurse Diet Cokes and enjoy warm slices of Papa John's as the program commences. Several speakers address the nervous, yet passionate, room as results trickle in. Trump takes Kentucky and Indiana. The room erupts in boos. This is to be expected. No one would ever foresee Harris winning these states. Yet, for some reason, we’re all put on edge.
Some time passes before our very own Vote24.org calls the next state: Harris takes Vermont. Now we’re talkin’ — this is an election.
For every boo shouted in vain of Donald Trump, a tenfold applause rips through the auditorium. The atmosphere is electric. These students care. These students believe in the democratic process. This energy is stoked by the first two speakers: Speaker of the Rhode Island House of Representatives K. Joseph Shekarchi and Providence Mayor Brett Smiley. Each speaks confidently of Harris’ chances and paints a bright picture of the future for the students in the room.
The Democratic Party never expected to win in a landslide, but it did expect to win by a margin. But as the night raged on, reality set in. The oceanic feeling observed within Democratic circles buzzing of a potential “blue wave” simply never came to pass. As we write, Harris’ pathway to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency is becoming narrower and narrower.
In the Democratic Party’s effort to fight against Donald Trump, it used the unprecedented unity under Kamala Harris to treat Trump’s supporters as something other than American. By treating the values and perspectives of non-Democrats across the country as ridiculous — with belief in a surefire Harris presidency offering us license to do so — we lost the same voters who may have helped us defeat Trump.
Even if the fleeting blue wave magically reappears and clinches the race, a Harris win would only further clear us to refuse engagement with those we disagree with. If we’re winning, why should we bother?
During tonight's election watch party, in response to questioning about what the country would look like under a second Trump term, Mayor Smiley affirmed his commitment to protecting the rights of people of color, women, and those identifying as LGBTQ+, all under his jurisdiction against federal extremism.
Mayor Smiley answered the question: If our values are not upheld by our federal government, who will protect us? We have Brown, and we have Mayor Smiley to uphold our values. Thus, we are exempt from the elbowing and close-quarter contact of political division. We are not forced to confront how drastically disparate our fundamental political values are from approximately half the country’s. Instead, from our Ivy tower, we can condemn those who just handed Georgia’s votes to Trump as backwards and undeserving of our sincere engagement.
We at Brown exemplify the worst of an establishment Democrat’s culture: alienating moderates and conservatives, especially when we’re ahead. It is all too easy to pretend they don’t exist. However, we must as critical thinkers and future leaders of this nation not make the same mistakes that allowed this election to transpire.
This is where we leave you: Trump currently holds 244 electoral votes to Harris’ 214 and Trump is favored in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The odds of the United States of America electing Kamala Harris as its next President are exceptionally unlikely.
We still hope for a Harris win. But for the sake of our nation, we need to realize the missteps that have allowed the Democratic Party to end up where it is today.
Paul Hudes is a staff columnist and a member of the editorial page board for the Brown Daily Herald. His column is wide-ranging but focuses mostly on American politics. Paul studies Applied Math Economics and English Literature.
