(C) Common Dreams
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Opinion | Joy Is Not a Strategy [1]

['Patrick Healy']

Date: 2024-08-20

If the Republican convention’s message for America last month had to fit on a bumper sticker, it would read, “Trump is God.” Delegates deified him relentlessly as the risen Trump after the assassination attempt. They told me over and over that he was spared to save the country with his re-election. Only on the final night did Donald Trump come crashing down to earth with his nomination speech. Divine it was not.

What a mistake. The most divisive man in America was suddenly getting a measure of good will from skeptical voters after he was nearly killed. People were tuning in to see if he’d talk like a changed man. And then he threw it away with the same old rant. All Trump had going for him was President Biden’s weakness.

Flash-forward to this week. If the Democratic convention’s message for America had to fit on a bumper sticker, it would read, “Harris is joy.” The word has gone from being a nice descriptor of Democratic energy to being a rhetorical two-by-four thumped on voters’ heads. Don’t get me wrong — there are many worse things than joy — but I cringed a little in the convention hall Tuesday night when Bill Clinton said Kamala Harris would be “the president of joy.” “Joy” is the new “fetch” from “Mean Girls”: Democrats are bent on making the word happen.

But joy is not a political strategy. And God is not a political strategy. The good news for Democrats is that Harris seems to understand this. Americans want her to lower their household costs and make it easier to find housing. Being our joyful Momala is not going to win the election.

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[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/opinion/kamala-harris-democratic-convention.html

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