I’d been working the polls as a Republican committee person in my Old Richmond neighborhood for about four hours when a neighbor, a woman, walked up to me after she voted, looked me up and down — especially at my red Trump hat — and said without blinking, “Do you want to grab me by the p*ssy?!”

When she said this I was talking with the black janitor of the school doubling as a polling place. The janitor looked at me, said “Whoa!” and stepped back. Years ago this same woman used to stop and have friendly sidewalk chats with me when I was a liberal Democrat. She started to ignore me a few years ago when my politics changed. It didn’t bother me because I knew these were her issues. 

Clearly, she was unhinged on Election Day. Clearly, she had a sense that Donald Trump was going to win the election. It was something I think that was very much in the air. I felt it the day before while going about my day: a great feeling of joy swept over my body. This internal wave buoyed my senses to such an extent I had to ask myself: Why am I feeling so good? What is this feeling? But there it was, as clear as day: I felt wonderful and yet nothing had happened in my life to make me feel this way. 

“With your permission, I will grab your ——!” I replied to the woman, not knowing what else to say. 

The absurdity of her remark seemed to call for an equally absurd reply. She backed away from me and looked at the black janitor I’d been speaking with. “Are you with him?” she said contemptuously, inferring he was a black Trump supporter in need of conversion therapy. “I’m the janitor here,” he replied, even more astonished. The woman frowned and mumbled something about Donald Trump.

“I think you’re at the wrong rally!” I told her. 

The day was fairly peaceful after that encounter although one of my Democratic committee friends working the polls that day confided he thought Trump was going to win the election. Four years ago when I had secretly voted for Trump and had yet to change my party registration I met him on the street the day after Biden’s win and he greeted me with a big smile. “The Trump guy is history!” he said, thinking he was talking to a fellow believer. I offered him a half-smile, enough to hide my disappointment. 

“If he doesn’t win — but I think he will — it will be because women came out in huge numbers and voted him out,” the Dem committeeman said. 

That seemed to be the main talking point among the Dems working the polls that day: Donald Trump should not be president because of the way he treats women. Not world peace, not the threat of WWIII, not the border crisis and the hordes of migrants invading US cities, not DEI and gender ideology insanity or even biological men in women’s sports, but the way he treats women. The way he talked about reaching out and grabbing. That was everything, the entire world. He’s mean to women. He wants to grab them. Not a word about the “You go girl!” candidate Harris and her support for BLM, defunding the police and her comparison of ICE — in 2020 — to the Ku Klux Klan. Et cetera. 

As the day wore on, another Dem colleague working the polls told me he doesn’t care who becomes president. This was an admission of sorts that he didn’t feel so good about the election. “Whoever is president doesn’t affect my life at all,” he said. “My focus is on local politics.” As the father of seven children, he attributed his steady job status and the steady job status of his children — who are employed by the city — to the Democratic machine in City Hall. I credit him for his honesty. He’s loyal to the machine because the machine is loyal to him. Self-interest as prime motivator; it reads like an Ayn Rand novel. 

Wearing a red Trump hat at the polls generated many smiles and thumbs up. On most election days the majority of the people at this polling place will accept Democrat sample ballots but refuse Republican ballots. This year I noticed a difference. Many voters took both. Sometimes couples would enter, the man taking a GOP ballot while the woman went Dem. Young hip good looking couples appeared wearing MAGA shirts. It gave me hope, as did late reports of 150,000+ Amish people voting in a national election for the first time in history. News stories that morning showed pictures of horses and buggies draped out in Trump flags. I reminded myself of the conversations I had with six Amish people on Amtrak while en route to Pittsburgh just a month ago, and how they said Trump had to be elected and they were all going to vote for him. 

Most voters that day were polite and civil. This is a trait of my Old Richmond neighborhood although one tall disgruntled male Harris supporter in a baseball hat gave me a good scowl. State Rep Joe Hohenstein of the 177th District and his entourage made an appearance, as they do at every election. Hohenstein is generally friendly; we chatted amicably and even joked (I reminded him that MAGA women are the most beautiful women in the US.) Hohenstein’s all-male twenty-something entourage stood nearby; one or two of them sported a detached elitist air. They clearly didn’t like Trump hats. 

A thirty-something male Democratic observer from Washington DC appeared on the scene. He seemed friendly at the outset and also a little amazed at the friendly banter between the Dem and GOP committee people who had to work side-by-side. I chatted him up at one point and mentioned I used to be a radical Dem but then had a conversion experience comparable to Saul of Tarsus when the latter was thrown off his horse by a blinding flash of light. 

Yet the Washington guy had no idea that Tim Walz as governor of Minnesota supported people in Minnesota to obtain driver’s licenses regardless of immigration status — he called this Republican propaganda — or that illegal aliens in 2025 would be eligible for MinnesotaCare, a health insurance for lower-income residents who don’t qualify for Medicaid, a measure that is expected to extend coverage to 40,000 people — mostly illegal aliens — and cost taxpayers $109 million. 

Our chat ended when I brought up Jack Smith. “He’s only doing his job,” he said. He added that he didn’t like Merrick Garland but only because Garland didn’t go after Trump more aggressively. 

Later that night at a GOP Election Watch party thrown by State Rep. Martina White at Cannstatter’s restaurant in the Northeast, I spoke with a poll watcher who spent the day at another polling place, the Port Richmond Library at 2987 Almond Street. He related a bizarre incident when a woman voter there went berserk and started ripping up Trump signs, screaming “I hate Trump — I just hate seeing those signs!” 

In a far more serious incident at the same polling place — a library branch, by the way, that scores a ‘10+’ on the lefty woke scale — the same man explained how two Dem female poll watchers called the police (he was decked out in a Trump hat) because he spent two minutes talking to voters near a doorway where people voted. Without even talking to him, the women reported to police he was intentionally blocking the entrance to the library and trying to prevent people from voting.

Here we have an example of obvious harassment from two Harris feminist operatives. The police came and left because — of course — no crime was committed. The man hadn’t even realized he was close to “blocking” anything.

At Cannstatter’s the mood was upbeat as two hundred or more Trump supporters shared a lavish buffet and open bar. Large TV screens allowed revelers to view the latest election returns. The red wave was building — and building. The racially diverse crowd — many Indians, people of color, and average working Joe’s — circulated around the room as if trapped in a wonderful dream. Meanwhile, a German film crew making a documentary on Donald Trump and US elections made the rounds with their camera and microphone. 

Somewhere in the crowd, Rep. Martina White was saying hello to friends and strangers. 

After four years of the most gross persecution one can imagine, the candidate of the century, Donald J. Trump, a true survivor in every sense of the word, looked like he was about to triumph over the enemy. Dancing Tim Walz and Kamala Harris and her cackle would soon come crashing down.

By sunrise on November 6, the world was changed forever. A revolution of global significance had occurred, comparable — as Alexander Dugin observed — to 1917 and 1945.

“…Kamala is the perfect representative of today’s Democratic Party,” Ann Coulter noted on Substack. “Her entire life has been one affirmative action promotion after another. She even got into law school on the basis of her race — as the law school has bragged. And this week, she almost made it to the top on the basis of her race and gender, without doing, let alone achieving, anything.”

Thom Nickels is a Philadelphia-based journalist/columnist and the 2005 recipient of the AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism. He writes for City Journal, New York, and Frontpage Magazine. Thom Nickels is the author of fifteen books, including “Literary Philadelphia” and ”From Mother Divine to the Corner Swami: Religious Cults in Philadelphia.” His latest is “Death in Philadelphia: The Murder of Kimberly Ernest.” He is currently at work on “The Last Romanian Princess and Her World Legacy,” about the life of Princess Ileana of Romania.