Puja Thakkar had already planned to attend Kamala Harris's inauguration in Washington on January 20. A doctor in Danville, California, she managed to obtain two tickets, through an elected member of Congress, to be present in front of the Capitol. One for herself, the other for her daughter, aged 12, who would share a moment of history, and personal history too. From an Indian family settled in Berkeley, like Kamala Harris's mother in the 1970s, the doctor runs a clinic that employs around 50 people, and a tear came to her eye when she thought of the energy she had to muster up to impose herself in a mostly male business world.

The doctor had given her employees the day off to encourage them to vote. The evening of Tuesday, November 5, was a shock. "I know this sounds so naive and so stupid of me, but I really thought that Kamala was going to win." Anger rose in her voice. "First, I thought, maybe a white woman would have won. But that doesn't work. Because Hillary (Clinton) did not win. So what this result says is that anyone is better than a woman. Anyone. Basically it's saying that a felon is better than a woman!"

For Democratic women, the shock of Donald Trump's re-election was harsh. How could someone like him have won? A man who had claimed during the campaign that he would "protect women, whether they like it or not"? How could he be supported by 74 million voters? "I don't have a lot of faith in Americans anymore. I don't know any Trump supporters. I don't know who they are, but I don't want to know them," said Holly Marie, a Washington retiree who had just come out of two days of "hibernation" without talking to anyone or watching the news. "It's a mystery why there's so many Trump supporters."

Thakkar doesn't get it either. She struggles to understand how people who are likely to suffer cuts in health insurance or social services voted for Trump. One of her employees came to inform her that she had voted for him. "I told her 'congratulations'. What could I say to her?" Another, of Mexican origin, lamented not knowing how to talk to her son, a Trump fan, when their family includes undocumented immigrants. "It just doesn't make any sense," said the clinician, pointing to a meme circulating on social media. It shows a young man in a "Latinos for Trump" T-shirt brandishing a sign: "Please deport my mom!"

'Support group'

The day after the defeat was overwhelming. Arriving at the office, Martina, a young San Francisco chemist who preferred not to give her last name, was terrified that one of her colleagues might be among Trump's voters. "You wonder who you can trust." The department head tested the waters: "How are we feeling this morning?" "Phew, everyone was on the same line. It was like a support group," she said. "We talked for half an hour. When we got back to work, things were already going better."

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