Letter from West Berkeley

Dear Wags,

Whatever you think of Kamala Devi Harris, there’s already an echo chamber tailor-made for you. But even cynics feel a jolt when a little genuine enthusiasm cracks an epistemic silo. The heady moment Democrats are enjoying will lapse into trench warfare with the MAGA movement soon enough. Meantime, appreciate the twists in a great political drama.

The firsts of a Harris candidacy make for slick memes. Social media is not the electorate (if it were, we might be discussing a J.D. Vance bounce). Still, what a mood shift. Amid Biden’s stumbles, polling looked ominous for Democrats. That was before the ticket shuffle, when the death march vibe abruptly gave way to feverish aspiration. There are miles to go before anybody sleeps, but Lenin was right about one thing — there are years when lots of history happens, all at once. This is one.

The D.C. Desk has written about an insidious feeling of stuckness afflicting American discourse. Things are coming unglued in intriguing ways. Donald J. Trump has been a dominant global figure for nearly a decade. He lost the 2020 election but remains the 800-ton gorilla of our politics. In the process, culture war fights rewired the American psyche. Across the spectrum, we have rubbished the old slogans about who we are—optimistic and future-oriented—in favor of his general view, which is that we’re going to hell in a hand basket.

There’s a thistle of truth in this, which accounts for Trump’s resiliency and the spread of his flavor of populism around the world. Still, it makes for bleak messaging. Trump is in a total control of the political party that, no so long ago, sold Morning in America. He’s poised for a comeback, still unable to articulate a broadly admired agenda. Rhetorically, he prefers the clock set at half-past midnight.

Harris has her flaws, which Republicans will remind us of. But her greatest asset has less to do with tired identity politics and fundraising prowess than a near-universal yearning to turn the page. Born in 1964, she’s on the cusp of Generation X, a vale of humility between two demographic mountains of conceit. She’s old enough to remember the Cold War but young enough to grock the disruptions of the new century. Gen Xers, the adults in the room, have long weathered the histrionics of the huge cohorts they are sandwiched between. It may have made them wise. So far, Harris vibes ease and moderation. It feels fresh, which is what makes this a contest.

The Democrats have an old, exhaustively documented love affair with hope. Their most eulogized national campaigns—1960, 1992, 2008—were, as Sarah Palin might say, hopey-changey. The risk in hyping a happier future is disenchantment — soaring speeches about passing the torch are often followed by backlash. Still, this is the tune Democrats know how to sing, and it’s been known to build winning coalitions.

For all sorts of reasons, Biden couldn’t convey that message. That left him with a fraying base and Trump-loathing as the only motivator. A lesser-of-two-evils election is congenial territory for Republicans, who have a powerful mythology of their own. Namely, that liberals are ineffectual, pander to America’s enemies, and are patsies for cultural radicalism. Great Republican presidential victories—1968, 1972, 1980—are fables about strength vs. weaknesses.