Joyous Ride: Upbeat Democrats Are Spreading Optimism to a Divided (and Newly Joyful) Nation
The gleeful army has shaken not only Team Trump but also right-wing pundits. Even Fox News’ attack dogs Jesse Watters, who is also known for criticizing Harris’ laughter, voiced frustration over his mother’s newfound infatuation with the vice president, claiming his mother is “a Kamala freak. Always talking about fun.”
Third, warmth begets warmth. It’s called positive reinforcement. Projecting a positive vibe tends to make others (in this case, potential voters) feel positive. And this energy can be felt in the large crowds, spontaneous chants, and overwhelming excitement that has returned to the races.
Fourth, the country has been so tired of fear for so long that the Democratic campaign has brought a wave of relief, hope, promise, and renewed political engagement.
Eight years of MAGA gloom—with a global pandemic in the middle—have shrouded the country in a cloak of darkness. In 2016, Trump won the presidency by tapping into a deep vein of discontent among voters. He talked about grievances constantly. He stoked fear. He helped unleash a national mood of hate: hate for the so-called deep state, hate for the establishment, and hate for the Other. And he did it by stoking long-simmering resentments among his base—resentments that, by their very nature, are often the result of legitimate concerns. But sometimes, those resentments stem from a kind of paranoid self-loathing rooted in the belief that the American Dream is somehow not for a large segment of the American electorate. From his inaugural address (“This American carnage stops right here”) to his call to riot on January 6, 2021 (“Stop the steal!”) to four years of social media criticism of Joe Biden and the American judicial process on social media (“The legal system in our country has been corrupted and politicized to a degree never seen before”), Trump has figuratively polluted the political air of the United States. When Biden initially handed the reins to Harris and voters responded with enthusiasm, it was clear that they were yearning for a break from the drumbeat, looking for a more optimistic message, even if many may not have realized it at the time. They were primed for the positive.
“Make America Great Again” has always been about going backwards. And in 2016, Trump cleverly picked the election key because we are at an unusual turning point in history when a majority of Americans are so frightened of what the future represents (technology, climate change, the global economy, shifting migration) that they have voted to get into a time machine. But much of this 248-year-old American experiment in representative democracy has been about progress, about embracing the future. And in fact, we may be rerouting ourselves along that tried-and-true path of progress when we see the raucous crowds roaring to the call-and-response rhythms of Harris declaring at her rallies, “We’re not going back.”
While there will be battle royales over the next three months over ideology, policy, and personal history, I believe this election will fundamentally boil down to a contest between the future and the past, between joy and anger. Indeed, many pundits are seeing a surge of young people joining the voter rolls and becoming active, making their opinions known, loud and clear. They will undoubtedly play a decisive role in the outcome. The question in this race, at the end of the day, will be whether those at the ballot box are inclined to embrace tomorrow with joy or to return bitterly to the prospects of yesterday.
Which is to say: What’s happening with the Harris-Walz campaign feels new and real—and different. It feels more like a movement than a moment. And the Republican attacks on the ticket being “communist” or “socialist” just feel hollow. We’ve seen it all before. And no matter how we feel about politics, most of us are just tired of the old and desperate for the new.
Like that venerable political sage Stephen Stills one observation:
Something is going on here
But what it actually is is still unclear…
Maybe it’s joy. And maybe simple human emotions can change the future of a nation.
