Joe Lamberti/AP Photo
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz arrive at last night’s campaign rally in Philadelphia.
Until Joe Biden agreed to step aside for Kamala Harris, I hadn’t quite appreciated the pit of dread and despair that we had fallen into. We were bracing for a second Trump term, and with it not just the end of American democracy but the loosing of all that is ugly in American life.
As journalists, we were consumed by exploring the multiple ways that Trump could quickly turn America into a dictatorship. My last feature article examined how Trump could weaponize the IRS. It was depressing as hell.
This election is far from over, but there is now a more than decent chance that we will be spared. Not just that we will be spared, but that as voters decide they’ve had enough of Trump’s sheer meanness and narcissism, Harris might even win big. And that prospect is energizing activism and turnout.
Many of us have been experiencing feelings that were all but extinct—a sense not just that we dutifully need to support the ticket to stave off something worse, but genuine enthusiasm and excitement.
In the space of two weeks, the chatter about Harris has gone from “well, at least she is more coherent than Biden” to “hey, she is really good and she is rising to the occasion.” Harris turns out to be not only effective, but cool. Trump just can’t handle that.
Tim Walz is a reminder that it’s possible for leaders to be culturally mainstream and substantively progressive—that the American dream is built on supports that only affirmative government can provide. Walz has perfectly captured the renewed sense of possibility by invoking, of all things, joy. Had Joe Biden spoken of joy, it would have been risible if not pathetic.
Another unaccustomed experience is total party unity on the Democratic side. In the space of barely two weeks, we’ve gone from enervating fragmentation—with Democratic leaders doing everything possible to undermine their all-but-certain nominee until Biden finally took the hint—to universal embrace of the Democratic ticket.
I literally can’t remember a moment of such unity since Lyndon Johnson ran in 1964 against Barry Goldwater after the assassination of John Kennedy. And Johnson, the greatest progressive since FDR, was already starting to get sidetracked by Vietnam. A button distributed by Students for a Democratic Society at the Atlantic City Democratic convention that year captured the ambivalence: “Part of the way with LBJ.”
Even in Barack Obama’s first election, in 2008, when there was such excitement and enthusiasm, the undertow of bitterness from the Clinton camp prevented the kind of unity that we are seeing this year.
The possible defection of some on the left was neatly turned into enthusiastic support by Harris’s choice of Walz for running mate. Wonderfully, given his Jimmy Stewart life story, we have the sublime paradox that the left loves Walz for his policies but the Trump campaign finds it impossible to plausibly paint Walz as a dangerous lefty.
We are starting to dream big dreams again. Maybe Democrats can even keep the Senate, with a Harris landslide helping all of the incumbents keep their seats. If Harris wins big on a tide of increased turnout, it’s conceivable that Colin Allred could defeat the loathsome Ted Cruz in Texas. The latest polls show Cruz ahead by only about three points. Even in Florida, Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell has been gaining on the Republican incumbent Rick Scott.
If Harris does win big and brings with her both houses of Congress, then she can begin to deliver on her promises, repair democracy, and take on the daunting issues that have been all but sidelined by the intensity of the campaign—from intractable foreign-policy challenges in the Middle East and Ukraine to the scourge of global climate change. Then at least, with MAGA as a bizarre interlude in the nation’s past, we can be depressed about the real issues.
