Inside Kamala Harriss tense, historic election day party [Video]

WASHINGTON—It was of no small significance that Kamala Harris, who spent much of her brief, unexpected, and as of late Tuesday night, increasingly long-shot, bid for president talking about anything but the historical meaning of her own campaign, chose to hold her election night party at Howard University, aka “The Mecca” — her alma mater and one of the most important sites of Black culture in the U.S.A.

This was never going to be an election about history. Americans were not in a historic mood. They were angry: about inflation and migration, about abortion, crime and the lingering, inchoate fury of COVID-19. The voters Harris sought were focused on the now — on the cost of eggs, as the mayor of Allentown, Pa., told me last Friday. Not on milestones. Not on meaning. Not on much of anything beyond their own front doors.