The Politics of Joy

                 I read David Brook’s article about emotions, which he ended on a political note. It got me thinking about the buoyant shift from despair to joy that Democrats are having.

Happy Democrats

                I’ve not seen a happy Democrat since about 2014 (a friend helpfully suggested December 2012 after the Newtown shooting as the end of this politics of joy). A decade. We have 10-year-olds running around who have never seen their parents express political joy. Sure, perhaps they expressed relief in 2020, maybe they chuckled about Bernie Sander’s mittens, but that’s all they’ve seen.

                Gone those heady days. I remember canvasing for Obama throughout West Philly for both the primary and general. There was such excitement and hope. Crowds erupted for this once in a lifetime politician, charismatic and thoughtful, embodying the kind of world we hoped for. There were spontaneous moments of cross cultural and cross racial epiphanies. It was beautiful, even if a little naïve; remember when some white folk were proclaiming that we were “living in a post-racial America”?

The Emotional Shift

Governing is harder than campaigning. The Bail Out and Cash for Clunkers, the Affordable Care Act and killing Osama Bin Laden, were all accomplishments—Bin Laden is dead, Detroit is alive. It was enough to secure a second term, but they didn’t feel like unabashed victories. These policies didn’t lived up to the emotional heights on offer. The Great Recession still scarred the economy, the ACA website rollout was, to use a little Norwegian understatement, unfortunate, and terror networks became even more diverse and diffuse in response to the decapitation of al-Qaeda’s leader.

                The cautious joy of the Obama years shifted to vague disillusionment as the Republicans backed away from immigration reform, Obama was labeled “The Deporter-in-Chief” and the Democratic party was unsure how to proceed with the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Yes, there were wins, like Gay Marriage, the Paris Climate Accord, and normalizing relations with Cuba, but there was the Merrick Garland fiasco and most prominently the Clinton coronation.

                Then along came Donald Trump, with his take no prisoners and hit everything that comes within arm’s reach as hard as you can, kind of politics, not to mention how that style of politics empowered his supporters to be bullies. In the primary I watched a clutch of older women turn on one of their own when they found out she liked Marco Rubio; they suggested her husband must be a “small man” like “little Marco” until the bullied lady declared she’d go with the group and vote for Trump too. Then they all erupted in joy (say what you will about Trump’s folk in 2016, there was a type of joy at those rallies).

Campaign buses were driven off roads. Nazis invaded Charlottesville. Eventually when Trump lost in 2020 his supporters invaded the capital. These were not times of joy for anyone who wasn’t a true believer. Even in victory over Trump, there was no joy, only relief. There is a reason the things we remember about Biden’s inauguration are Bernie’s mittens and Gorman’s poem.

I don’t know the best place to point this aspect out, but there is also the reality of the emotional toll of the Pandemic years. They were a joyless time for everyone. But for liberals it was yet another indignity, being quarantined for years (and partially on account of Trump’s poor handling of the initial crisis) was hefted atop the ongoing pain of being bullied and harassed by Trump-style politics. I wonder how long the general Pandemic malaise that ended the Trump Presidency will shape our politics?

Insular fear is an incomprehensible politics

                It is worth reflecting broadly on what happened in the Trump years to the Democrats, how it shaped them to become strange joyless people. They went from happy to defensive. Remember that Hillary’s online outreach consisted of secret Facebook groups and tentative plans for pantsuit flash mobs that never materialized. After Trump was elected this insular, almost paranoid, defensiveness took hold.

It was so familiar to me; as a liberal from Wyoming, I get being careful about who you express your political affiliation to, I get how only trusting a small group of people for your political discourse can make your politics smaller than it needs to be, but also safer. I get “othering” everyone who isn’t clearly a safe person to talk politics to, because extremists on the other side are acting in genuinely evil ways… but as a liberal from Wyoming, I also know that leads to big assumptions, and you know what they say about assumptions…

Once your politics turns in on itself, even for good reasons having to do with safety, you begin to be unintelligible to the average voter, even traditional allies. For example, if an implicit understanding of Michael Foucault is required to communicate your politics, you aren’t going to be able to communicate your politics. Every shibboleth you erect for safety is another barrier for coalition building.

Joy

                And that brings me to our present moment. The big “pop in the face” Donald Trump has come up with regarding the Democratic nominee for President is ‘laffin’. And the Democrats wisely saw an opening, a way to crack open the emotional protective layers their coalition had built up during the Trump years.

They responded to Trump’s taunt by effectively saying: “Laughin’? Laughin’? Of course we’re Laughin’! There is a joy in how we want to govern. There is a joy in defeating a bully. There is joy in a forward looking vision that tackles: climate change, housing costs, and seeks to expand opportunity through affordable education and increased manufacturing in America. Joy in seeking bipartisan deals around immigration reform, the child tax credit, and prescription drug costs. Joy because we’re trying to unite the country instead of slicing and segmenting people into out groups to ostracize and bully. Joy in protecting gay and trans citizens, and clawing back women’s rights at the ballot box, even in the reddest of states, and reminding the average man that this weird internet red pill masculinity isn’t you dude!”

And this is the healthiest thing I’ve seen from either political party in years. Happy warriors win elections; a joyful movement represents America well.