Three months into Donald Trump’s new administration, Dawn Ngonda says, she and her husband lost their jobs with AmeriCorps after the government canceled millions in federal grants to the program. They were out of work for about a month before she found a job with the Montgomery County public school system, in Maryland, but the consequences of Trump’s election were palpable there, too. Amid a federal crackdown on unauthorized immigrants in the area, she says, parents began sending kindergartners to class with birth certificates and passports stuffed in their backpacks in case authorities came to their school. One of the kids, she says, carried a location tracker that her mother had given her.
Ngonda was standing in line outside the Warner Theatre in downtown D.C. on Thursday, blocks from the White House, waiting to hear from the woman who failed to prevent Trump from retaking Washington.
Or was it the people around Kamala Harris – the Democratic campaign operatives – who had failed?
“Yeah, I’m starting to lean toward that,” Ngonda said Thursday, standing at the front of the line wearing a black blazer over a T-shirt bearing a picture of Harris as a toddler. “It seems like there were some things that could have been said about her accomplishments that weren’t said to the American people. They kind of led the American people to believe she was one way when she really got a lot of things done, but it wasn’t said.”
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Harris’s book, “107 Days,” about her short presidential campaign and her time in the White House, leans heavily toward that. She writes, for instance, about being sidelined by the West Wing in her role as vice president. She called it “recklessness” when President Joe Biden’s circle of advisers (including her) resisted calls from Democratic officials and voters for him to step aside. She writes that the talking points she was given by the Biden campaign after his fateful debate against Trump were “worthless.”
On Thursday, the former presidential hopeful’s book tour brought her back to a city full of people whose lives and careers have also been derailed by her loss.
Outside the Warner, the two lines wrapping around the block were a collage of brat nostalgia and MSNBC #Resistance-core: women in the blazer-jeans-Converse combo, street vendors selling buttons that read “No Kings in America” and “Anti Trump Grandmas Club.” On a nearby table, there were collegiate hats that read “Gulf of Mexico, Est. 1550.” Before the show, guests lined up for a “meet and greet experience” at the theater; one person said she paid $350 for her ticket.
“I want to see her,” said a woman named April who spoke on the condition that she be identified only by her first name because she is a federal worker and feared retribution for her views. “I want to be in the same room with her in the midst of what we’re going through. It will be nice to be in an environment where you could experience what could have been.”
April almost didn’t come after reading the first chapter of the book and reliving the “devastating” emotions of the campaign – “something maybe I should get over.” But she decided she really wanted to see a Black woman who made it very far, even if she didn’t win. April only faulted the voters for that.
“At first, I struggled with the fact that, well, I question whether or not people voted in their best interest,” she said. “And now I realize they did. Racism, misogyny, whatever you want to call it – that was the interest that they voted in. And that’s just something that we have to live with.”
“A part of me maybe is looking for closure,” she added, before stopping. “Not so much closure but seeing that this is a Black woman who made it this far.”
Sonja, who works in law in Virginia and also spoke on the condition that her last name be omitted out of fear of professional repercussions, called Washington a “ghost town” – a fate that a Harris victory could have averted. She showed up to the event in a green T-shirt depicting a hypothetical 2021 Harris inauguration that she bought in 2019, when Harris was running in a primary against Biden and others.
“During the administration, she was being kept quiet, and her light dimmed so it didn’t overshine Biden,” she said. “Which, look where we are. Look where we are now.”
At the earlier of two back-to-back shows, Harris took the stage for an interview with Kara Swisher – LinkedIn bio: “Irritant | Podcast Host | Author” – who began by asking about the very normal news of the day.
“It’s f—ed up,” Harris said regarding a comment made by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., speculating about a possible link between Tylenol and autism by pointing to research about circumcised children. (The work that he appeared to be citing mulled a possible link between circumcision pain and autism but did not study Tylenol use.)
“Sure, of course,” Harris said, with a shrugging hand gesture, about the possibility that Trump’s Justice Department might attempt to prosecute her, as it is New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI director James B. Comey.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Harris said when asked whether she would run for president again.
At her second show, later in the evening, multiple protesters interrupted her talk, with one yelling out, “Kamala Harris, your legacy is genocide.” Video posted on social media shows Harris rising from her seat at one point and saying: “You know what? I’m not president of the United States.”
In her book, Harris writes that D.C. felt “unbearable” after the election – “Let’s get out of here,” she tells her husband, planning a trip to Mauna Kea in Hawaii – and onstage Thursday, she said it felt “weird” being back. Still, the visit was a kind of early homecoming for the alumni of Howard University – Harris’s alma mater and the venue for what would have been, in an alternate reality, her acceptance speech. At the early show, there was the signature “H-U” call, to which Harris and the rest of the Bison in the theater replied: “You know!”
Swisher asked Harris about a point in her book in which Harris writes that her first interview had to be flawless. Could it be that Harris was being too cautious, Swisher asked?
Harris began her answer: “My standard for myself has always been that I have to be flawless.”
As she went on, Swisher tried to but in: “And it’s a great word – ”
“Let me finish,” Harris said crisply. The crowd erupted in cheers.
Then, Harris: “I’m sure it’s a shared experience for many people here, which is, we know the standard by which we will be judged.”
Swisher tried to take it further – “Can you talk a little bit more about that …” – but some in the audience had run out of patience.
“We’re Black women!” they yelled, as if filling in a blank for Harris.
There were a few scattered boos at the first mention of Biden. One of the problems with her own campaign, Harris said onstage, was that there was not enough time for her to communicate her ideas to voters. Swisher wondered whether a primary would have helped with that.
“Not with 107 days,” Harris said. “When were you going to do a primary?”
The former candidate added: “I told everyone who wanted to know, if you want to have some process, this is the process. I’m calling everybody to ask for their support. Anybody else who wants to jump in, come on in. And nobody did.”
Devinn Lambert, a scientist working for the federal government who came to the event on a bike with her three daughters in tow, also sees a problem with the process-loving mindset of some Democratic voters like her. Processes can be flawed. Perhaps the process of asking questions should’ve happened two years ago, she said.
“We have been loyal to the institution too long, and we trust in structures and in process, and I think that we have been trusting of that for too long,” she said. “… And I think the Democratic Party is paying for that now.”
All right – enough about the past. Blame game aside, Washington now exists in the context of Harris’s loss – and Trump’s reimagining of the federal government. Harris had a plea for public servants who were undecided about whether to call it quits.
“I would ask you, for the sake of the rest of us, to stick with it,” Harris said. “Because this will be over, and then we need those who have experience and understanding to bring others in and remind us of the nobility of public service.”
A lot of things would be broken by the time this administration is done, she said.
But: “Let’s not be too nostalgic. Because it’s not like what we had before was that perfect, either.”