What's with all this talk of joy?
Americans used to support optimistic candidates. This year presents a challenge.
Joy appears in many places. Will voters see it on the ballot this fall? (Photo by Luca Upper on Unsplash)
In my lifelong avocation as a musician, I have three times sung Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with great orchestras. Beethoven’s final masterpiece is acknowledged as one of the supreme achievements in musical history, his heroic music elevating the powerful lyrics that were mostly written by Frederic Schiller in 1785 as “Ode to Joy.” So electrifying is the music, in fact, that listeners often don’t pay attention to the translation. “Joy, thou shining spark of God,” it begins, “all people become brothers under your protective wing.” With joy — “Freude!” the chorus sings, in German — all can “join in our chorus of jubilation.”
Lately, you can’t have missed all the talk of joy if you’ve been paying attention to the new Democratic presidential campaign. It’s unclear if “joy” was a focus-grouped concept that political consultants calculated might contrast Kamala Harris with Donald Trump, or if the notion sort of took hold organically, like Tim Walz’s characterization last month of contemporary Republicans as “weird people” because “they want to take books away, they want to be in your exam room.” After that, “weird” briefly became Democrats’ favorite word, which was probably a good thing, because it’s easier to grasp the notion of Trump as “weird” than as a “threat to democracy” or an “unstable narcissist,” or an “emotionally delaminating elderly man.,” all of which are surely true, but not as guilelessly deflating as “weird.” It gets right to the point. It’s true.
But joy is bigger than any of those, and maybe more useful. It captures the unexpected delight of Democrats about their ticket and its prospects, certainly, but it also may be an effective guiding principle for the campaign. In that, it seems both genuine and strategic.
Harris and Walz are far from the only ones who are talking about joy. Oprah Winfrey’s rousing speech to the national convention ended with her flinging her arms wide, declaring, “And let us choose joy!” The Rev. Al Sharpton did the same: “Joy! Joy! Joy!” he shouted, as the crowd cheered. Reflecting on his party’s changed mood, Sen. Cory Booker told a press conference, “It’s almost like weeping has endured through the night, but joy cometh in the morning.” Booker knows his Bible; that’s a line from the Psalms.
The idea of joy must be unsettling to the other side; otherwise, they wouldn’t be reacting to it. Fox News personalities were all over it throughout the Democratic convention, prompting Republican strategist Mehek Cooke to insist during a midweek show that the idea was “making people angry” because “joy isn’t going to pay our grocery bills.” Well, anger isn’t fungible either, of course. That didn’t stop Cooke from plowing on. “The word joy is very irritating,” she insisted, “because we’re not seeing it as we sit around our kitchen table and try to feed and protect our families.”1
I’m sorry that Ms. Cooke has no joy in her kitchen; ours is a quite happy place. (I just made some refrigerator pickles from our over-abundance of cucumbers!) But maybe people sitting around the kitchen table likewise aren’t seeing the dark vision that Trump is selling: his assertions that if a Democrat is elected president, there will be (he has said all this) “a bloodbath,” “bedlam,” “World War III,” as well as “crime, chaos, destruction and death,” so that there “may never be another election in this country,” because America will “go Communist immediately, if not sooner” — yes, even sooner than immediately! — and then “we won’t have a country anymore.”2
Is that what Americans really believe in 2024? Or it it possible that instead of the nightmarish misery envisioned by Trump, voters could be willing just now to embrace a vision of joy for America?
For decades, it was accepted political wisdom that American voters preferred optimism, and campaign advisers routinely cautioned candidates not to be dark in their outlook. In a classic study published in 1990, social psychologists Martin Seligman and Harold Zullow reported that the more optimistic candidate won 18 of 22 presidential contests, from the McKinley-Bryan race in 1900 through the Reagan-Mondale campaign in 1984. Optimism prevailed, Seligman explained, “because it inspires hope in voters and motivates candidates to overcome campaign setbacks.”3
But then there came cracks in the research outcomes. After the Reagan presidency — and a re-election campaign remembered for the sunny assertion in a TV spot, “It’s morning in America…” — every candidate adopted the Reaganesque notion that, essentially, “Things are pretty bad, but they can be turned around by electing me.” That formula became so widespread that it left little difference between candidates on the optimism scale. In a reflective 2016 Washington Post essay, Seligman suggested that overt optimism now might affect only the tiny share of the electorate that’s genuinely uncommitted, and who don’t know much about the candidates.4
Yet in the polarized partisan atmosphere of 2024, it is that fleetingly small number of voters that both campaigns are targeting. If the more positive rhetoric and demeanor of Harris and Walz touches those people, the results could be significant in what looks to be a very close race.
Beyond that, though, optimism’s greater value in a political campaign may be in its power to motivate campaign workers, donors and voters. The switch from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential candidate has electrified the party, drawing $500 million in campaign donations in a month, including money from 1.5 million new donors. Harris’s main fundraising group raised four times as much as Trump’s in July. No wonder Harris is feeling joyful, right?5
It’s often noted that success breeds success — a notion traced back to Aristotle, who wrote, “Virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions.” So the presentation of joy and momentum by the Harris campaign helps to assure its continuation, and the projection of joy can make the campaign’s joyful impact almost habitual.
Not that very many Democrats naïvely believe that Harris’s success so far will easily carry her into the White House. Nor are they cheerily ignoring the other side: They see the re-election of Trump as potentially disastrous, just as Trump says the election of any Democrat would be. One speaker after another at the Democratic convention warned of the consequences of a second Trump term — from inflation that would be caused by his tariff proposals to the encouragement of authoritarians and the crumbling of friendly democracies around the world that would result from his slapdash approach to international affairs.
But even the anti-Trump rhetoric of the joyful group isn’t as apocalyptic as Trump’s ominous stump speeches. In fact, the emergence of Harris seems to have given Democrats a sense of what the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, in his 1929 Letter From Prison, called “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” Their buoyancy is a sharp contrast to the harsh vision of darkness that Trump and Vance are selling.6
The concept of joy finds its place more often in religion than in politics. Tellingly, English translations of the Jewish and Christian scriptures use the term “joy” for several different words in the original Hebrew and Greek. The most common in the Old Testament is simchah, which derives from sameah, a Hebrew word that means “to be bright” or “to shine.”7
That’s a good description of what’s happening to the Democratic ticket just now: It is shining. The emergence of a bold, articulate woman almost two decades younger than her opponent has captured the attention of the nation. It is clearly frustrating Trump, who from the moment he descended his golden escalator in 2015 has benefited from his ability to steal the spotlight from anybody else. Even in moments that disgust at least half of America — the Access Hollywood tape of him coarsely bragging about sexual assault, the ignorant pushing of make-believe Covid cures, the baldfaced lies about everything from the weather at his inauguration to the tally of votes in the 2020 election — it is hard to draw the attention of Americans away from the reality TV star who used chicanery and shamelessness to turn himself into a cultural phenomenon: fabulously rich and seemingly successful, the leader of a movement of Americans who include the alienated, the opportunistic and the careless.
Now, though, the spotlight has shifted to Kamala Harris, who is in so many ways the opposite of Donald Trump. She is a woman of color who made her way up from ordinary origins; he was a son of wealth with all the advantages of a white male in 20th century America. Her work has focused on respect for the rule of law; he has long flouted and belittled the law, and even now threatens to pardon people convicted of attacking the seat of government. She is a daughter of immigrants whose belief in the goodness and promise of America seems genuine; he darkly implies that people like her will be the nation’s ruination.
How bright America’s future would seem, then, if Kamala Harris were to be able to push Donald Trump out of the bright lights he craves and into the isolated ignominy he richly deserves. You can imagine it: It would be a moment for the rumble of tympani and the soaring of strings and brass, for the full-throated exclamation of the chorus: “Freude!” Yes, it would bring joy.
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6360848621112
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/jd-vance-accuses-democrats-of-dark-and-ominous-tone
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-happiness/201511/be-elected-president-it-helps-be-optimist
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/08/05/optimism-clinton-trump/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/08/21/kamala-harris-dnc-fundraising/
https://www.centreforoptimism.com/pessimism-of-the-intellect-optimism-of-the-will
https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/joy/#:~:text=The%20commonest%20is%20simchah%20(1,%2C%22%20%22be%20glad%22%20(
NEWSCLIPS FROM THE UPSTATES
Dispatches from our common ground *
Wherein each week we look around what we call the nation’s Upstates — those places just a bit removed from the center of things — to find illuminating news and intriguing viewpoints, which you might not otherwise see.
This week, we share reporting published here:
Concord, N.H. (Portsmouth Herald, seacoastonline.com)
Rockford, Ill. (Rockford Register Star, rrstar.com)
Victorville, Cal. (Victorville Daily Press, vvdailypress.com)
NOTE: The complete “Newsclips from the Upstates” section, and The Upstate American Midweek Extra Edition, which is sent to email boxes on some Wednesdays, are available only to paid subscribers. Thanks for your support!
NEW HAMPSHIRE
A lie turns deadly because of easy gun laws
Last fall, a security officer at New Hampshire Hospital was shot dead by schizophrenic man who by law shouldn’t have been able to buy the gun he used. But as Annmarie Timmins of the nonprofit New Hampshire Bulletin reports, John Madore, 33, was able to buy the gun because he lied to the gun dealer about whether he had ever been committed to a psychiatric facility — and New Hampshire law does not require commitment records to be submitted to the background database. Legislation that would have reversed that practice passed the state House this year but failed when Senate Republicans defeated it at the urging of pro-gun rights groups.
ILLINOIS
State university campus financial travails get worse
Western Illinois University is laying off more employees, just two months after the last round of layoffs, as the regional public university faces the financial difficulties that confront higher education nationally these days. Tilly Robinson reports in the Rockford Register Star that the school’s enrollment has dropped from 11,000 full-time students a decade ago to about 6,000 now, and that it hasn’t been able to sustain continued leadership since its longtime president retired five years ago. University leaders described the layoffs as a move to reset WIU’s finances and “right-size” the school for a future with fewer students. With fewer young people showing up on college campuses, cuts in public funding and hostility to higher education apparent in Congress, faculty now are asking: Will Western become a small liberal arts school, a community college, a regional campus of the University of Illinois, or something else?
CALIFORNIA
It’s roasting season for Hatch chiles in the High Desert
Culinary experts say that New Mexico-grown Hatch chiles, which are available only from early August through late September, are known for their versatility in many dishes. Their smoky flavor profile derives from the soil and growing conditions in the Hatch Valley of New Mexico, where the rich minerals produce unique and tasty flavors. Rene Ray De La Cruz reports in the Victorville Daily Press that a growing number of supermarkets in the High Desert now roast them for customers. One fresh medium-sized pepper has as much Vitamin C as six oranges, De La Cruz reports. On the heat index, most Hatch chiles score between 1,500 and 2,500 units — about the same heat level as poblano or Anaheim peppers, and just below Jalapeno peppers, which measure 2,500–8,000 units.
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NOW, LEARN TO WRITE OP-EDS
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THANK YOU for reading The Upstate American, and for joining us in the conversation about *our common ground, this great country. I hope you’ll join us again next week — or send a message with ideas you’d like to see us address.
-REX SMITH
Dear Ms Cooke: “protect your family” from what, exactly? You project what you protest.