Team Hillary lands on the wrong side of history

They came wearing “Nasty women” pins, Madame President T-shirts and stickers that read “I’m with her”.

For hours, they queued in line to get into Manhattan’s Javits Center and for hours they stood underneath the convention center’s glass ceiling, awaiting what they expected to be a blowout win for the person they thought would be the first female president of the United States. And then the mood darkened.

As polls began showing Hillary Clinton’s lead slipping in blue firewall states, some started turning their backs to the screen broadcasting the results, unable to comprehend what was unfolding.

By 1am in New York, they began slowly spilling out of the hall, not even waiting to see if their nominee would show up. Inside the convention centre, the crowd thinned. The ones remaining slid to the floors, sitting barefoot, shoes kicked off to the side, and cradling plastic cups of beer and wine from the concession stands. Some wiped away tears, others stared blankly at each other, trying to rationalise how something that seemed so tangible had slipped out of their grip.

“History has shown us many, many times unfortunately that when you tap into fear and you project strength – however reckless that strength may be – people are drawn to it,” said Peter Yacobelli, a financial services worker from New Jersey. “It’s terrifying.”

Jeremy McConnell, a PR manager who had driven up from Baltimore, said he felt overwhelmed by the realisation that so many Americans had been inspired by Mr Trump’s words – and that even more improbably these Trump supporters were people he knew.

“These people are my neighbours, my co-workers, they may even be my friends,” he reflected. “I did not know that so many Americans didn’t want equal pay for equal work. I had no idea that so many Americans didn’t want universal healthcare.”

It was a dramatic reversal from just a few hours earlier when the Clinton campaign was telegraphing a blowout victory in a celebrity-heavy victory lap, with an exuberant Mrs Clinton and aides revelling in the final moments of the campaign.

Earlier on Tuesday, aides had telegraphed minute details of Mrs Clinton’s final day on the trail, including the feast of salmon, vegan pizza and fries that she and former President Bill Clinton were dining on, and the election night outfit of her two-year-old granddaughter Charlotte.

As the early results came in, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon and former Democratic party chairman Debbie-Wasserman Schultz swanned around the convention’s hallways and expressed the same buoyant optimism about the outcome that they had marketed over recent days.

And then for five hours the Clinton campaign went silent.

Inside the convention centre, Mrs Clintons’ donors and friends gradually game to grips with the reality of the results as she eked out only a razor-edge win in Virginia and Michigan, a former Democratic stronghold, suddenly became a toss-up state.

They wondered aloud how the Clinton campaign’s renowned data operation – filled with some of the same whizz-kids who had helped carry Barack Obama to victory in 2008 and 2012 – had gotten its internal polling so wrong.

Some supporters immediately cast blame on FBI director James Comey and his decision to open a new probe into Mrs Clinton’s emails just 10 days before the election – a probe that eventually yielded no new information.

“We know who he’s voting for,” glowered Mark McMahon, an illustrator and Clinton supporter.

“There are just so much shenanigans with the FBI . . . new investigations. I sort of feel that might have also affected people,” argued Beatrice Moritz, a New York photographer. She tried to process the turn of events. “Most Americans don’t even vote. It’s probably 25 per cent of Americans that’s going to decide the presidency, right?” she asked aloud.

Shortly before 2am, the campaign suddenly announced that Mrs Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta was on his way to the convention centre – without the nominee.

“Well folks, I know we’ve been here a long time and I know it’s been a long night and I know it’s been a long campaign. But I know we can wait a little longer,” he told the crowd at 2am, saying that the campaign was not ready to concede. “Let’s bring this home,” he added, urging supporters to go home to sleep.

Within the hour, however, Mrs Clinton had already called her rival to concede.