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.
Harris gave a good speech Thursday. Her love for America was overflowing — a child of immigrants’ love, as the Democratic strategist Howard Wolfson put it to me. Republicans like to tag Democrats as down on America and its history, but it was interesting that when Harris radiated pride, it was not pride as a Black woman or pride as a glass-ceiling breaker; it was pride as an American. She was open and relatable and repeatedly put voters first. Meanwhile, Trump keeps playing God, calling in to Fox News as if entitled to airtime and making pronouncements about Harris from on high before being cut off.
This is a winnable race for Harris, but she hasn’t won it yet. Far from it. She hasn’t been tested — really tested — since Biden stepped aside. She hasn’t given a single interview or news conference to face hard questions. But it’s really the debates that will be her test. Her advisers think she might get away with doing just one against Trump. I think they underestimate her challenge in earning voters’ trust. She needs to start proving herself outside her comfort zone.
Ultimately, she needs more voters in the swing states to trust her to handle the economy better than her opponent. Barack Obama earned that trust through nearly two hard years of campaigning; he didn’t coast on “hope and change.” Harris can’t coast on “joy.” If she shows she can stand up under pressure, she can beat Trump and consign him for eternity to just playing God on Fox News.
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