The politics of joy vs. the politics of grimness

The last few years have been so bleak — Trump’s disastrous four years in the White House, the police murders of George Floyd and other Black men and women, COVID deaths, climate crises, Trump’s big lie, Biden’s declining health — that I had almost forgotten politics can be joyful.

And then Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic candidate for president.

She’s filling politics with a hope and exuberance I haven’t seen since John F. Kennedy ran for president. Her smile is spreading cheer. Her laugh projects joy. Her joyfulness is igniting excitement and enthusiasm.

She is still deadly serious about what America is up against. But she’s combining it with a jubilance that tells us we can triumph.

Instead of wasting her energy responding to Republican attacks, she continues to prosecute Trump rhetorically. She knows that the more the upcoming election is a referendum on him, the more likely it is she wins.

In her stump speech, she gets a big response from saying, “I have taken on perpetrators of all kinds” — and then delivers her punch line with a muffled laugh: “So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”

Audiences hoot.

She doesn’t communicate this in a nasty or mean-spirited way. She communicates it with satisfaction. She takes pleasure in the fact that she was a prosecutor — and often of men who share many of Trump’s traits.

She also uses laughter to show affection. Her now-viral line quoting her mother saying, “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” is followed by Kamala’s guffaw.

Laughter is based on connection. You laugh with other people. TV sitcoms used to have laugh tracks because it was easier for viewers to laugh along with everyone else, even imaginary others.

Laughing together is one of the important signs of humanity.

Contrast this with Trump, who never laughs. For him, it’s all anger, hate, and grievance.

Bullies don’t laugh with. They laugh at. Trump’s jokes are always at someone else’s expense. He ridicules disabled people. He’s nasty toward immigrants. He’s snide when he talks about liberals.

Bullies don’t laugh with because they have no compassion for other people. They don’t know how to laugh with others because they don’t know how to connect with others.

Trump criticizes Kamala’s laughter. “I call her laughing Kamala,” Trump said at a recent rally. “Have you seen her laughing? She is crazy.”

“You can tell a lot by a laugh,” he told supporters the other day. “She is nuts.”

One of Trump’s pals, Fox News host Sean Hannity, said on his show that voters “seem to detest” Harris on account of her readiness to laugh.

Republican compilations of her laughing are circulating online. Opposition research from the National Republican Senatorial Committee included “inappropriate laughter” as a way to criticize her.

Trump and his sycophants just don’t get it. In fact, they have it exactly backward. Americans love cheerfulness. We celebrate joyfulness.

Ronald Reagan understood this better than anyone. He always had a twinkle in his eye. It was always morning in America.

The most memorable moment in Reagan’s second presidential debate with Jimmy Carter in 1980 occurred when he chuckled and said, “There you go again.” The chuckle turned the comment from what might otherwise be seen as anger into a good-natured rebuke.

When Americans are asked to choose between the politics of joy and the politics of grimness, guess what? They’ll choose joy.

NOW READ: Bad news for Trump: Harris will bring the receipts on Dobbs abortion decision

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/