For Liberals, a Familiar Sinking Feeling Returns

Jamiee Peterson has never voted in a “non-Trump America.”

A registered Democrat in Colorado, Peterson was a 20-year-old junior at the University of Colorado-Boulder when Donald Trump was elected in 2016.

“I was excited to vote in 2016 cause I thought no way he would win,” Peterson told Newsweek in an interview.

She recalled that Election Night, watching the returns come in with her college roommates and feeling scared and hopeless when they realized Hillary Clinton was going to lose. “We drank a lot of wine after. We all did not want Trump to win.”

“It’s been a steady decline in hopefulness since then,” she said.

Liberals and Democrats of all stripes are remarking to each other in group chats, dinner conversations and social media posts about the familiar feeling of despair creeping in as Election Day nears. A pit-in-the-stomach dread that has overtaken the joy and relief so many felt after Kamala Harris replaced a faltering Joe Biden at the top of the ticket this summer.

November 8, 2016 still rents space for free in the heads of many such voters. The day that Clinton supporters believed the nation would elect its first female president was the day that Trump would pull off the biggest political upset in American history.

He would not only prove the polls and pundits wrong, but would also shake the confidence of Democrats who knew — just knew — that someone like Trump could not get elected, regardless of how flawed their candidate might be.

But unlike that landmark election nearly a decade ago, Democrats have something working in their favor this time around: their anxiety.

Clinton’s ascent to the presidency was considered by many to be a foregone conclusion eight years ago. Such a sure thing that the number of registered voters who stayed home on Election Day was probably enough to cost her the election.

This year, by contrast, no liberal in America thinks Kamala Harris has things locked up. And that could help juice turnout where it’s needed most, from western Pennsylvania to the suburbs of Atlanta.

Joy Turns to Fear

The liberal “bedwetting,” to use a term coined by Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, has exhausted Emily Clemons.

A registered Democrat in New York who works in sales, Clemons, 28, told Newsweek she’s tired of seeing politics flood her Instagram feed, of hearing about how close the race is when she turns on the radio, of playing worst-case scenario with her friends.

And yet, Clemons said, “We can’t stop worrying about it because so much is at stake.”

“I truly believe [Trump] will continue to undo some of the constitutional rights and perpetuate a sense of fear, disrespect to minority groups, and bring more instability to an already extremely fragile and divided country,” she said.

Peterson, from Colorado, echoed those concerns.

“I’m honestly just scared things will never go back to how they were, having debates where the parties are professional, respectful and actually care about the people they’re representing,” she said.

“It’s become a whole spectacle and it’s so polarized that it does scare me how far back things can go in terms of policies I would’ve thought would never be overturned.”

“I don’t feel optimistic about the election,” she added. “As much as I would like to think the Democrats will win, I really think the rage-bait and fear mongering Trump creates has seized a lot of Americans and put a lot of distrust in the whole election process as a whole.”

Anna Holcombe, a lawyer and registered Democrat in New York, said she felt more angry than dejected about the state of the race.

“The amount of people that claim to be sitting this one out, because they dislike both candidates is not only scary, it is infuriating,” Holcombe, 38, told Newsweek.

“I really try to understand people’s reasoning for things based upon their different lived experiences, even if I disagree. But to be faced with the options we have and think ‘nah, not for me’ is honestly disgraceful, and a dereliction of one’s duty to their neighbors and country.”

Anger mixed with existential dread and anxiety is exactly the kind of organizing principle that could fuel a massive turnout of the party’s base for Harris, said Steve Schier, a political scientist and author.

“That can be important in closely contested states,” Schier told Newsweek. “Combine that with voters’ dislike of Trump and you have powerful turnout motivations.”

Fear is the biggest difference between the motivating factors for Democrats and Republicans this cycle, according to Doug Gordon, the CEO of UpShift Strategies, a left-leaning communications firm. It could be that difference that decides an election that every political pundit predicts will be won on the margins.

“Republicans might dislike – or even despise – Kamala Harris,” Gordon told Newsweek, but Democrats “flat out fear a second Donald Trump term.”

“There is no question that fear, more than simple dislike, can be a real motivator to vote,” he said.

‘Healthy Anxiety’

Since their collective traumatization in 2016, the Democratic base has religiously showed up at the ballot box. They delivered a “blue wave” in 2018, ejected Trump in 2020 — when 85 percent of registered Democrats who voted for a third party four years earlier pulled the lever for Biden — and blunted a predicted “red wave” two years later.

In those midterm elections of 2022, a base of engaged, high-propensity voters became an even more prominent fixture of Democratic politics after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The hope for Democrats is that those reliable voters, many of whom are women of all races and classes, remain engaged enough to vote in November.

“The anti-MAGA coalition, which has fueled Democratic victories in 2018, 2020 and 2022, is going to vote in this election. [Mean]while Trump and Republicans are depending on far more irregular voters,” Gordon said.

“At this point of the race, I’d much rather be depending on reliable voters than irregular voters.”

Eric Schmeltzer, a Los Angeles-based political communications consultant, also expressed cautious optimism that Democratic anxiety could fuel a turnout surprise in Harris’ favor.

“Everyone is scarred by 2016. I’m no exception,” said Schmeltzer, who also served as the former press secretary to Howard Dean and Representative Jerry Nadler. “But what we also need to remember is that since 2016, Democrats have competed and, in many cases, over-performed.”

“Some of the anxiety that Democratic voters have felt in successive elections has ultimately contributed to a string of solid victories,” added Brad Bauman, principal at the Raben Group and the former executive director of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “Healthy anxiety that turned into electoral success.”

Still, Schmeltzer said, “victory isn’t guaranteed this year.”

He believes too many Democratic voters thought for “too long” that Trump’s legal troubles would be a bridge too far for independent and moderate voters to consider sending the former president back to the White House, especially as a convicted felon, and “that there just would be no way that Trump would make it to Election Day.”

But with the legal cases over Trump’s refusal to accept defeat in 2020 in various states of flux, and the Stormy Daniels case that resulted in a conviction having virtually no impact on the polls, Schmeltzer said Democrats are coming to the realization that the election will come down, as they always do, to which party is better at mobilizing their base in the handful of states that matter.

“The closer the clock gets to midnight, the more and more you’ll start to see Democratic voters get scared, and that will rustle them up and get them to work and turn out.”