Photos by Ash Marinaccio

The presidential election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump is only three weeks away. The campaigns are mostly taking place in the handful of swing states that will decide the winner of the Electoral College and thus the White House. Nonetheless, people The Indypendent recently spoke to at Washington Square Park have strong opinions about the two major party candidates as well as grave doubts about whether Harris can prevail. 

Anonymous
Tarot reader

I hate this two-party system in of America. I think that we have, for the last 20 years at least, been gaslit. Democrat versus Republican: same bullshit. It’s as if certain issues are kept alive in order to sidetrack us from the biggest divide in this country, which is the widening gap between the rich and the poor. So for that reason, and this is very controversial, I am for the bull in the china shop, which is Donald Trump in this case and his cohort of miscreants. The reason being is that I think that a little chaos is needed instead of the stifling administrations that we’ve had for the past many years. 

I think Trump will win. People are fed up with being bullshitted, so they want the Joker. Why is Joker such a popular movie? Because it’s growing inside of people that if the world is not going to give us what we deserve fairly, then let chaos reign loose. “Chaos is a ladder,” as was said in Game of Thrones. 

Kristin McGowan 
Sells Kamala Harris buttons

I was a Hillary volunteer in 2016, and, as I was leaving her [victory party] on the night of the election after the bad results, somebody handed me a button. I started selling protest buttons after that election, and I did it all through Trump’s presidency with this same setup. I took a nice long break when Biden was elected, and then I started selling them again in early 2024. 

I am all for whoever is running against Donald Trump, but I think that Harris has turned out to be a much better candidate than I even expected her to be. I really didn’t feel like I knew a ton about her. But I think she’s really smart. I think she’s running a very intelligent campaign. She’s speaking to younger voters. Her debate performance should have sealed the deal. In any rational world, that would have been the end of the contest. But unfortunately, we do not live in a rational world or country. 

I don’t know how to make a prediction. I sway wildly back and forth. I had a stretch of a few days, in the aftermath of the debate, where I felt like she’s doing great: She’s got all the momentum; she has tons of money, tons of volunteers… At that point I felt comfortable thinking, “She’s gonna win.” But with the polls we’re talking about tenths of a percentage point. When she ticks up or ticks down, it’s by the tiniest amount, so who really knows? I would have liked to see her continuing to go up in the polls, but I don’t know what she would have needed to get to for me to feel comfortable enough to say she was going to win. I feel like anybody who says they know who will win doesn’t.

Caleb Feiring 

I actually have not thought about who I’m going to vote for because it’s so obvious that I don’t even need to think about it. It’s going to be Kamala and Tim. Unfortunately, I doubt that they will prevail. The way that I think about it is this: In 2020 when Trump was presiding over a disastrous economy in a botched pandemic response, Joe Biden, who was Scranton Joe, barely won Pennsylvania. And, given that, I think, unfortunately, Kamala has less appeal to blue-collar workers in Pennsylvania, and with the fact that Donald has made a lot of progress with minority voters in Pennsylvania, it’s kind of hard to see how Kamala is going to come out ahead and find the votes that she’s lost in the working class and minority votes to Donald. So I’m pretty pessimistic. But I know that polls can be wrong, so I’m holding out hope. And I will be overjoyed if Kamala wins on November 5th.

Mandia Kapanika 

One of my main concerns is foreign policy. But also things more locally: women’s rights and education. Because of that, I probably will be voting for Kamala. There are a couple independent contenders that I definitely vibe with in terms of what they do. The issue is bipartisanship. I don’t think any of the candidates that are front running right now intend to change the situation. It’s not working, in my opinion. I’m not really sure what fixing that would look like, but it is an issue. I feel like we’re being pushed into the corner of picking the lesser of two evils right now, which is not really constructive. Ideally, I would love to vote independent. 

I want to say Kamala will be our next president. Though I’m not really sure how great that will be either. I really hope it’s not Trump. My first time voting was the election where Trump won, and it was really devastating. As a person of color, as a queer person, as a person who believes in women’s rights — everyone’s rights, really — it was very devastating. I hope not to relive it. 

Rune Gravengaard 
Danish tourist

On both national channels in Denmark, there are biweekly news segments about the American election. Being from Denmark, I think I have a more-so socialistic perspective. So for me, it’s a no-brainer. Trump is pretty much a nutjob. But, to an extent, I also get if you’re from a rural area… It’s the only candidate on that side. 

Especially before Joe passed the torch to Kamala, it was like: You are 300 million people, are these the only two? Are these the only two that are eligible? I was a little bit confused. It’s just weird. And it’s funny because we were just sitting in a sports bar, and the TV campaign commercials don’t say what each candidate wants to do. They’re just like, “This candidate doesn’t do this,” “He’s a crook” and “She’s a crook.” It’s just a shit show. It’s just like muck-throwing. It’s not like, “What do you want to do for your country?” We don’t have that in Denmark. It’s more, I guess, civilized. 

It’s hard to predict who will win. It’s neck and neck at the moment. For the sake of the world, I would hope that it’s Kamala, because Trump is very nationalistic. We don’t need U.S. interference everywhere. For keeping it civilized internationally, I would prefer Kamala. But, I have to give credit to Trump at least. He’s the only antithesis to the woke agenda. 

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