'What are you hearing?' Frenetic close to 2024 race
With a national focus on women's sentiments at the ballot box, nerves on edge in the final hours of the 2024 race
GLEN ROCK, PA _ “What are you hearing?”
That’s what I’ve been asking sources, friends, colleagues all day. And what they’ve been asking me.
It’s what I instinctively led with with a modest, and diverse group of voters, Tuesday morning, gathered outside the Glenview Alliance Church in south central Pennsylvania, a polling spot just a little south of York, PA.
Jeanne Clifford, 70 of Loganville, stood outside the church handing out handcards supporting Vice President Kamala Harris. The former insurance company worker who moved from Connecticut to live closer to her daughter, said she was supporting Harris based on her support of women’s rights and her economic plans.
“This is the first time I’ve ever done anything other than cast my ballot, because I feel really strongly about not getting another term with Mr. (Donald) Trump,” Clifford said.
Not far away, a handful of longtime Pennsylvania residents said they were all in for Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance.
Carol Ann Bradfield, 78 of Glen Rock, said she was supporting Trump because he’s not a politician, is a good businessman and is anti-abortion.
“I don’t believe in murder, and that’s what they’re doing with all this abortion,” said Bradfield, a former church secretary at the Mount Zion United Methodist Church.
In this rural stretch of southern Pennsylvania not far from the Mason Dixon line transforming into an exurb of Baltimore, a broad array of voters showed up, young and old, a lot of women, a mix of Ford F-250s and smaller sedans like old Priuses parked in the lot.
This has been the most fraught and frenetic election in modern American history: A former president, Trump, almost assassinated, convicted of 34 felonies, threatening violence, promising unity and almost singlehandedly shifting the national discussion on immigration. The first Black woman to top a ticket, Harris, sprinting to the finish line after a badly weakened President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, running in the first White House race since federal abortion protections were ended in 2022.
But voters sounded more driven by the issues they feel directly — from inflation and the economy to control over their bodies.
As of Tuesday evening it’s impossible to know who will win the White House, Harris or Trump. The ballot boxes are still open for many more hours across the country, and counting the votes could go past Wednesday.
Veteran Republican and Democratic sources who spoke with 24sight News throughout the day expressed the broadest array of emotions, predictions and observations — concerns about Trump’s closing of the race, nervous optimism among Democrats watching shockingly high voter turnout in key battleground states.
And persistent talk of whether a wave of women, voting in the presidential race since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, would decide the race.
A fractured media environment, altering how Americans learn about politics and form their decisions before casting votes — or deciding against voting. A badly damaged social media environment, bathed in targeted disinformation.
The birth of an American pro-democracy movement uniting the old hawks of the Republican Party with a much more progressive Democratic Party. And the recreation of Republican Party as a nationalist movement, playing more to working class voters.
And big questions of how the nation will look after a winner is revealed after the votes have been tallied.
*** Catch me tonight in studio with Steve Scully on Sirius XM Channel 124 from 8-9P ET and then on LiveNow from Fox, 9-10p ET. And back again on Sirius XM Channel 124 with Julie Mason at 12:45 a.m.
Look for some livestreams on the Substack App in between, as we watch the results start coming in.
And thanks all, it is a pleasure reporting for you. I hope this is useful as we all try to navigate some very turbulent times in American history.
Tom - This caught my eye - "he's not a politician, he's a good businessman, he's anti-abortion". I don't know what you call a guy running for the 3rd time for President, but ok. A good businessman? If it got to facts that would be a tough position to defend without a lot of qualifications, but another ok. I assume she wants a national ban on abortion. While I'm sure he would have been appalled to hear that before yesterday, I imagine it's a good bet he'll put the anti-abortion folks in charge and they'll stand a good chance of getting their way, or nearly so. Did any of these folks explain what they wanted him to actually do?