Kamala Harris voters in California, stunned by Trump's victory, come to an agreement

Before heading to an election night party on Tuesday, Noelle Smyth reached for a bottle of Ridge Montebello wine to celebrate with friends what she hoped would be a stunning victory for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

But when she looked at the label, she suddenly felt uneasy. The year was 2016 — the year she put on her pantsuit and pearls and watched Hillary Clinton's historic candidacy go up in flames in favor of Donald Trump.

Smyth put the bottle back. But IIt wasn't enough to avert impending doom. Wearing a Susan B. Anthony necklace from her late mother, who fought for abortion rights in the 1960s, Smyth, 58, headed to the Democratic Volunteer Center in Mountain View, expected to win the statewide popular vote .

“This can’t be right,” she said to a friend. “This is a bad dream.”

Now Harris voters — particularly California Democrats and those in the Bay Area where Harris grew up — who have long found a comfortable home in California's liberal bubble are wondering whether they will face an even broader form of political isolation become. Trump hasn't just won back his hardcore base. He expanded it across the country.

“I hope California is big enough to hold its own, but I don't know,” said Laurie Stewart, 62, of San Jose, who founded a local activist group that meets weekly to support Democratic campaigns. She said she was heartbroken over the loss, but “I'm not surprised because this is the dystopia we live in.”

On Wednesday morning, Harris conceded the race, telling his supporters: “While I concede this election, I do not admit the fight that fueled this campaign.”

Harris' supporters struggled to make sense of the news that more than half the country voted for a convicted felon who inspired a mob to storm the U.S. Capitol after he refused to admit he won the 2020 election had lost, and that someone found guilty of sexual abuse promised to take revenge on his enemies – not to mention the vile language he used to describe the vice president and other antics.

“It's just baffling to me how America can elect someone with the character of our new president,” said Zina Slaughter of Richmond, who joined a “Win with Black Women” call on Sunday and then boarded her flight to Washington on Wednesday. DC canceled where she planned to attend the presidential inauguration. “I’m so very disappointed in America.”

Harris, 60, who was born in Oakland and raised in Berkeley, spent her 107-day campaign targeting the middle class with family-friendly policies and attracting women and young voters over the former's appointment of three Supreme Court justices Angry presidents repealed the constitutional right to abortion.

After an exuberant Democratic convention in August, the election campaign that Trump won against President Joe Biden appeared to be shifting in their favor. Donations began to flow, celebrities like Taylor Swift advertised their support, and the polls began to shift in their favor. Then their momentum faded and Democrats' fears returned.

The campaigns revealed deep divisions between the candidates and polarized the nation.

“No matter who won this election, it is clear that we have become two separate Americas and neither America understands or has much interest in understanding the other,” said political analyst and USC professor Dan Schnur.

“This puts California in exactly the same place that conservatives in Texas and Florida were four years ago. Either you get involved and get angrier and fight back even harder, or you try to understand why there are people on the other side who don’t agree with you.”

California, long a conservative target, became Trump's frequent counterpart and Harris the face of his problematic policies on homelessness, drugs and crime, as well as the skyrocketing prices of gasoline and housing. In Trump's final speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan, before Tuesday's election, he called her a “radical left-wing lunatic who destroyed San Francisco.”

In some ways, San Francisco—an epicenter of “wokeness”—has moderated itself in recent years, kicking out school board members during the COVID pandemic who spent more time renaming politically incorrect schools than sending kids back to class recalling a district attorney voters felt was too soft on crime. After years of national media showing images of thieves looting drugstores, Californians statewide approved a ballot measure that increased penalties for thefts.

But Harris still represented the liberal ideals that she told voters had been ingrained in her since the days when her parents took her in a stroller to civil rights rallies at UC Berkeley in the 1960s.

It is this tension between red and blue states, Trump and Harris voters, that continues to divide the country even after the election. Smyth, who left the bottle of 2016 Ridge Montebello at home on Tuesday, said she wasn't quite sure what was next.

“I wish I could say I'm just going to sit on my couch and eat candy for the next four years, but I'm not going to give up completely,” Smyth said. “Everyone just needs to stay strong, mentally and physically – say a serenity prayer right now.”

Originally published: November 6, 2024 at 5:55 pm PST