It's Fun When Politics Are Fun

It's a hot Harris summer.

There remains a whole lot to say about Kamala Harris and her candidacy. I believe she can win, for one. And for two, it’s fun to see an injection of optimism and fun into this race.

Full disclosure, if I were king of the Democratic Party, I would have opted for a quick, open primary. I think competition is good. I think it’s worth getting a fuller sense of several candidates’ strengths and weaknesses. I think it’s best when party voters feel like they have a say. Harris would have had an advantage in this process, and I think there’s a good chance she would have come out on top. In my ideal world, she would have had to try.

But we live in the real world, and in this world, it’s July of an election year and the incumbent president dropped out of the race roughly 100 days before the election. He may not have cultivated his vice president as a successor or put her in as strong a position as he could have (and I wish he had done that very differently), but his vice president is a strong candidate by many measures. Even taking Harris herself out of the equation, her name on the ticket means it will almost surely be much easier for her to use election dollars raised for the Biden/Harris campaign. As vice president, she’s been vetted, which radically decreases the risk of an October surprise — something we cannot say for several of the other front-runners (there’s a reason this tweet about Gavin Newsom is so funny). And I believe that the perception that the party is passing over Harris would really alienate and potentially infuriate core Democratic constituencies, including female voters and Black voters.

Going with Harris also more or less splits the difference in risk aversion within the party. The core of the debate over whether Biden should drop out hinged on one’s perception of where the biggest risks sat: Were they primarily vested in the candidate himself? Or were they in the potential for chaos?

The Democrats who thought the risks sat with the candidate got their way when Biden dropped out. Those who feared chaos are getting their way now, as the party rallies around Harris and avoids an open primary. It’s not how I would have chosen to do things, but there’s nevertheless a lot to recommend it.

Also: This is fun, isn’t it?

The Biden-Trump debate and the attempted Trump assassination and the days after were very much not fun; they were dreadful, scary, and divisive, and I was ultimately feeling pretty resigned to four more years of a Trump presidency. It frankly didn’t seem like Republicans were having much fun either. And not that politics need to be entertainment or a party — I frankly wish more people would elect boring highly competent technocrats — but also, people like parties because parties are fun.

For the first time this cycle, the election feels fun. The memes are not dark. The soundtrack is good. Harris is inspiring people not because she promises to stick it to Trump, but because she promises something better. Republicans are mocking her laugh, but god, how good does it feel to have a candidate who really laughs? Her dorky mom-isms feel sweet and endearing. The girls and the gays love her, and the youngs are talking about her in ways I frankly don’t understand, and isn’t that great. Sure, we danced in the streets when Biden won in 2020 because it was such a relief to see four years of Trump come to an end and also we had been so cooped up inside thanks to Covid. But no one was dancing at a Biden rally. Harris, on the other hand, is the chief executive of Brat Summer.

No, fun alone doesn’t win elections. But it sure doesn’t hurt. And Trump knows this as well as anyone.