At final Harris rally, a mix of enthusiasm and worry over US election

US singer Black Thought, drummer Questlove of The Roots, perform ahead of a campaign rally with US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on November 4, 2024. Agence France-Presse

PHILADELPHIA — In line for Kamala Harris’s final rally of this US election campaign in Philadelphia on Monday, enthusiasm for the Democratic candidate and acute concern at the possible return of Donald Trump to the White House were palpable.

“I’m cautiously optimistic, but I’m worried,” said Robin Matthews, a community organizer. “If she doesn’t win, we’re screwed.”

A long queue snaked along the main avenue leading to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, outside which the vice president was due to address a crowd late in the evening, just hours before polls open on Tuesday.

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Matthews, who lives in the Pennsylvania suburbs that will be so crucial in deciding this key swing state in a knife-edge election, said she feared a second Trump presidency.

“He’ll ruin everything,” she said. “There’s no checks and balances anymore (if he is reelected).”

Her 16-year-old son Asher intervened to offer what he felt was at stake in this election: “The preservation of our democratic system.”

‘Short end of the stick’

Under the autumn foliage, percussionists set the mood before a rally where stars such as Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey were expected to attend, and at the foot of the famous museum steps climbed by Sylvester Stallone in an iconic scene from the film “Rocky.”

As a long campaign comes to an end, marked by extraordinary twists and turns in a country that appears more divided than ever, Yvonne Tinsley, a 35-year-old accounting manager, just “want(s) it to be over.”

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She is fed up with political ads on TV and tired of having to explain to her friends that Facebook and Instagram videos do not count as real news.

She does not expect any political miracles from Harris, though.

“I understand that Kamala is not going to change everything, but I know that she’ll at least be able to start this back on the right track,” she said.

For her, too much is at stake if former president Trump returns to power.

“I’m a Black woman in America, so unfortunately, all policies hit me different,” she said.

“Every Supreme Court decision or bad Republican policy, or bad Democratic policy, I get the short end of the stick.”

Robert Rudolf, 58, said Trump had “normalized” racism and misogyny.

Wearing a “Harris-Walz” cap and a flannel shirt, he said he comes from a rural Republican-leaning corner of the state, and that it had gotten harder to talk to neighbors about politics.

“We have gotten very divided,” he said. “It’s very difficult to talk to people on the other side.”

Those tensions are raised even higher by Trump’s false allegations of voter fraud, said 42-year-old Roxana Rahe.

“Trump is already kind of foreshadowing like that everybody stole the election from him before the election even happened,” she sighed.