Notebook: Observations in Pennsylvania, a swing state (November 8 update)

One of our 2024 summer interns is a student at Penn State, and has been attending campus and area events related to the Presidential election. Knowing that Pennsylvania was a major swing state, she shared observations with us during and after the election.

Wednesday morning, shortly after the election results were announced, I received an email from the Department Head of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Penn State that read, “I am convinced that we are highly valued by the college and will continue to be supported in the work we do.”

This semester, I am taking two women’s studies courses. I am a board member of Triota, the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Honor Society. 

In my first women’s studies class, we put our regularly scheduled discussion on hold to share our feelings on an online whiteboard. Although “politics talk” is not allowed in classrooms, my professor shared that they couldn’t stand by quietly.

Key words from my classmates’ posts: overwhelmed, angry, disappointed, scared, shock, hopelessness, terrified, numb, heartbroken, betrayed, sadness, defeated, mourning and grief. 

One student said, “I feel stupid for having some faith in America and in people to elect Harris-Walz.”

Another student said, “It feels awful to be wrong right now.”

Some students feel “disconnected with reality.” People I’ve spoken to are angry that the majority of the country has fallen “complacent” to misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, sexism, etc.

Kamala Harris said in her concession speech: “To the young people who are watching, it is okay to feel sad and disappointed, but please know it’s going to be okay. Sometimes the fight takes a while.”

In my second class, we had a mind-calming meditation led by my professor. “We all need intentional breaks and pauses,” they said. 

Wednesday night during the Triota meeting, we held a zine workshop. Creating these little magazines gave members and I space to share our feelings and focus our energy into one creative outlet. 

The importance of finding distractions, communities, and modes of self-care are discussions I’ve had with nearly everyone I’ve spoken to post-election.

Within these communities, some staff and students are gaining hope. Wednesday they were dragging through the day. By Thursday they had found renewed bravery, hope and power. 

“Don’t ever stop trying to make the world a better place,” Harris said. “You have power.”

 

Editor’s Note: Our January issue is focused on “Hope & Grief,” and centers the voices of women in their 20s. We nearly closed two weeks ago, but are still alive thanks to donors. Please support our ability to center the feminist leadership, Greater Minnesota conversations, and mutual aid efforts that will drive our work in the coming year.

 

 

From AP News

Republicans landed historic victories in Pennsylvania, winning the battleground state’s valuable presidential electoral votes, posting a two-seat gain in its U.S. House delegation and sweeping all four statewide offices on the ballot, including a U.S. Senate seat. Something similar happened in the other “blue wall” states of Michigan and Wisconsin, where Donald Trump prevailed again after losing in 2020. Still, Democrats held on in key Senate races in Wisconsin and Michigan, if just barely, and the results played out differently in each state. Republican victories were most pronounced in Pennsylvania, a state flagged early on as this year’s preeminent swing state, where deep dissatisfaction surfaced with the status quo.

Read story

 

Related reading from MWP reporter Amy Gage

 

Presidential Debate Watch Party

At the September 10 debate, I attended a watch party with the Penn State National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) with about 150 to 200 students. Most of them were students of color. The crowd got loud after extreme comments were made. A student jokingly got up to walk out after Donald Trump mentioned people in Springfield eating pets. The room erupted with laughter when Kamala Harris took a long pause while thinking of a way to respond to Trump.

Removal of Student Newspaper

The day before conservative Charlie Kirk came to campus on September 19, newsstands and newspapers belonging to the student-run paper were removed by the school. The newspaper contained voter registration and Kamala Harris advertisements.

The stands and papers were returned within the week. The September 27 edition of The Daily Collegian read: “Not going anywhere.”

Charlie Kirk ‘You’re Being Brainwashed’ Tour

Founder of Turning Point USA, and conservative activist Charlie Kirk, stopped at Penn State as part of his ‘You’re Being Brainwashed’ tour. His rally took place on the HUB-Robeson Center lawn, one of the most open and busy spots on campus.

A crowd formed in anticipation. Some people rushed to snap pictures with him, or grab a Make America Great Again hat.

Behind the sea of MAGA hats stood a group of about 30 protestors with signs and chants about racists not being welcome. As the conservative crowd grew, protestors moved closer. By the time I left the event, some of the conservative crowd was yelling back at protestors.

Violations to university policy regarding use of sound amplification equipment prevented Kirk from giving his speech or having a debate, but the crowd remained strong for the duration of the event.

 

Related

Excerpted from Heather Cox Richardson, October 31 — Meredith McGraw and Jessica Piper of Politico reported today that nearly half of the ballots already cast in Pennsylvania have come from voters over the age of 65, and although the numbers of registered older voters are divided evenly between the parties, registered Democrats have made up about 58% of Pennsylvania’s early votes, compared to 35% for Republicans. Those numbers might well simply reflect different approaches to mail-in ballots, but they also might explain why Trump is already claiming fraud in Pennsylvania.

He is also seemingly nervous about Pennsylvania because women are voting there at a much higher rate than men in the early vote: 56% to 43%. And Democratic women are the biggest group of new voters in the state. New voters who were too young eight years ago to hear the Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women, have been hearing it on TikTok lately, as younger users record their reactions to it and call out their older male relatives for voting for anyone who would talk as Trump did. …

The Harris campaign and pro-Harris organizations leaned into the history of women’s suffrage today with videos highlighting those who fought so that women could vote and reiterating: “We are not going back.” To assist those women who might not feel safe letting their husbands know how they voted, women have been posting notes in women’s public bathrooms assuring other women that their vote is secret. A Democratic advertisement voiced by actress Julia Roberts powerfully makes the point that women do not have to tell their husbands how they vote.

Right-wing figures like Charlie Kirk have expressed alarm at the gender gap in voting. As well, there has been a right-wing backlash to the idea that women will vote for Harris while letting their husbands assume they’re voting for Trump.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), who famously cheated on both of his first two wives, expressed dismay at the idea that a woman might need to keep her vote secret from her husband. “For them to tell people to lie is just one further example of the depth of their corruption,” he said. “How do you run a country…saying wives should lie to their husbands, husbands should lie to their wives? I mean, what kind of a totally amoral, corrupt, sick system have the Democrats developed?”

On the Fox News Channel’s The Five this morning, host Jesse Watters said that if he found out his wife “was going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair…. That violates the sanctity of our marriage.” Christian pastor Dale Partridge posted: “In a Christian marriage, a wife should vote according to her husband’s direction. He is the head and they are one. Unity extends to politics. This is not controversial.” But, he added, “submission does have limits. A wife doesn’t need to submit to her husband in sin (in this case voting democrat).”

Tonight, at an event with right-wing host Tucker Carlson in Glendale, Arizona, Trump seemed to move beyond misogyny to murderous intent. He turned his increasingly violent rhetoric against former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), who has urged Republican women to vote against Trump. “She’s a radical war hawk,” he said, “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”