While having lunch at a restaurant the other day, I overheard a college-age server behind the counter telling co-workers she wished her friends wouldn’t get angry every time politics comes up.
“Why can’t people just be positive for a change?” she asked.
Since I can’t mind my own business, I blurted out, “OK, vote for Kamala Harris, then. She’s positive about a lot of things,” or words to that effect. The server smiled uncertainly, then repeated she just wanted everyone to be happy again. The first national election she had really been aware of was 2016, she said, and it’s been an ugly national shoutfest since then.
Erich Bridges
I could’ve rolled my eyes and lectured her about elections since 1968, how a lot more is at stake than her “happiness,” how the threat to democracy from MAGA world could take away many of her personal freedoms and so on. But I managed to bite my tongue, nearly drawing blood.
Hectoring her won’t work. She doesn’t seem to be thinking about specific political issues at this point, even if they directly affect her life. She simply wants to feel better about being an American as she starts her adult life in earnest. Dire warnings and doomsday scenarios won’t inspire her to vote one way or another.
A little joy might.
That’s what Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are offering at the moment, with their big smiles, laughter and positive vision of the future. It seems to be striking a chord in a public deeply weary of rage and hatred.
“That could spell the end of MAGA, which can’t exist without anger, hatred and fear.”
After nearly a decade of nonstop nastiness, the tide might finally be turning against the politics of anger, hatred and fear. While I might want it to be because people are finally waking up to the threat against democracy, it could be because people are just tired of all the ugliness. And that could spell the end of MAGA, which can’t exist without anger, hatred and fear.
I may be wildly unrealistic and naive in this hope. There’s plenty more nastiness to come over the next two months of campaigning. We’ve already seen it from Trump as he tries — with apparently increasing desperation — to smear Harris. The race probably will get even tighter than it is now. Even if Harris wins, Trump’s angry legions likely won’t accept the election results and will fight them in the courts — perhaps in the streets.
And issues still matter deeply to voters in this election: the economy, immigration and the border, abortion, Israel versus Hamas, international engagement versus isolationism, American democracy versus Trumpist authoritarianism. Harris will need to get much more specific about where she stands on a host of divisive topics. She can’t go the distance as a happy warrior without getting more specific about policies.
Or can she?
Ronald Reagan did pretty well with jokes, a Hollywood smile and “morning in America.” Bill Clinton attracted millions of votes with “I feel your pain.” Barack Obama launched a movement almost as fanatically messianic as Trump’s with “Yes, we can!”
“There is a difference between beating a candidate and sidelining a movement,” writes evangelical columnist David French in The New York Times. “After nine years of confronting Donald Trump and facing a MAGA movement that has remade the Republican Party I once belonged to, I believe that fear may be sufficient to beat Trump, but only joy can push MAGA back to the periphery of American life.”
“Only joy can push MAGA back to the periphery of American life.”
French, like many political observers, didn’t expect Harris to do so well right out of the gate — especially given the extraordinary circumstances surrounding Joe Biden’s departure from the race for president and her entry. But something bigger seems to be happening.
“When evaluating American politics and culture, you sometimes can feel the mood shifting before it’s reflected in the data,” French says. “That was certainly true at the beginning of the Trump era. … Soon enough, the data started to match the mood, and angry populism was upon us.
“I’m wondering if the mood is shifting again. I wonder if we’re on the front end of a change in national temperament that could be fatal for MAGA — if we’re leaving the era of the nasty snarl in favor of the broad smile. … I’d like to offer a theory. Partisans aren’t really shifting their mood, but the exhausted majority of Americans is, and right now the Harris campaign is much closer than Trump’s to capturing their desires and reflecting that mood.”
The national mood change has caught Trump off guard and unprepared. All he has is a snarl. If Americans aren’t buying it anymore, he’s in deep trouble.
P.S. If I might offer a bit of unsolicited advice to progressive Christians: Consider taking a page from the Harris-Walz playbook. As dire a threat as Christian nationalism is to American Christianity, people will only listen to so many warnings about it before they tune out. The same goes for endless attacks on conservative evangelicalism. We heard you already.
A movement defined by its reaction to opposing forces is by definition reactionary. We know what you’re against. What are you for? Tell folks, and do it with a smile. It’s working for Harris.
Erich Bridges, a Baptist journalist for more than 40 years, has covered international stories and trends in many countries. He lives in Richmond, Va.
Related articles:
Faithful Politics examines 10 ways Christians do politics | Analysis by Steve Rabey
There’s a Crazy Index for Donald Trump | Analysis by Rodney Kennedy
The grace of joy — and the sneerers | Analysis by Stephen Shoemaker