The cameras miss what’s really happening in Washington

On election day in the capital there is no thrill in the air, but there is a sound: that of hardboard being placed over all of Washington’s windows. Wherever you go in the centre of town, the area is either boarded up or in the process of being so. I enjoy my sausage and eggs on a sidewalk to the accompaniment of the last windows being drilled. ‘Was everything all right?’ my waitress enquires. ‘Delicious,’ I tell her. ‘If the city is still here tomorrow, I’ll be back.’

DC feels as if it is preparing for a natural disaster, not an election result. Like all other major cities in the Western world, Washington has been stripped of its tourists by coronavirus. But an added exodus of the locals has occurred. The quiet polling stations suggest that people voted in advance and then scarpered. The grand boulevards are so deserted that what cars remain sail by and the few pedestrians can cross where they will. Occasionally a phalanx of police go past on their bicycles. The streets around the White House are blocked by huge trucks.

Yet this is the capital of a nation so divided that it cannot even agree on the nature of the storm it is battening down for. The Republicans claim that the risk comes from the Democrats stealing the election and sending their ‘Antifa’ militia on to the streets. The Democrats claim that Donald Trump will remain in the White House even if he loses and will raise his own militia from a position of standby.

On the eve of the polls I go to a bar in town to meet the leader of a group called the Proud Boys. They have had a certain amount of media attention of late, largely thanks to Joe Biden bringing them up in his first debate with Trump.