Kamala Harris leans on the 'politics of joy' in race against Trump for the White House

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is hitting every data point — polls, crowds, campaign donations — to justify a conclusion on the final night of the convention in Chicago that this may actually be the year the U.S. elects a female president.

There is one other intangible factor that could push her ahead of Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Joy.

Harris has been talking about joy in various contexts for awhile.

We just weren’t paying attention.

Then, when Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, kept referring to joy in his remarks — it started to stick.

Said Oprah Winfrey on Wednesday in her rousing speech, “And what we're going to do is elect Kamala Harris as the next president of the United States. And let us choose joy!”

 “Joy! Joy! Joy!” said the Rev. Al Sharpton at the end of his speech Thursday.

So in the United Center, before Harris delivered her acceptance speech, the question I put to Quentin Fulks, Harris' deputy campaign manager: When it comes to joy, are we in a moment or what?

“I think it's going to go forward," Fulks said. "I think it's something that people are feeling. I think that people have been looking for hope and joy and energy for a while.

“And I think that it's not something that you can poll. I think it's something that you feel. I think our campaign's very cognizant of that, and I think that that's why you continue to see Gov. Walz, the vice president out there.

“It's not a campaign theme," Fulks continued. "It's just something that they're doing, that they're bringing to the table. I think if you try to manufacture something like joy, it can go wrong because it's fake. I think the reason why it's resonating with people is because it's authentic, and I think we see that across the board with both Gov. Walz and the vice president.

"And even if you look at Gov. Walz and his family last night, I mean his son, Gus, I think that these are all very important things,” Fulks said, referring to Walz's 17-year-old son, who has a nonverbal learning disorder and ADHD, tearing up when his father spoke.

At a morning press conference, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker said talk of joy at the convention “has been the greatest gift that I could ever have — to be able to witness what we have been witnessing, especially... in comparison to what we saw in the Republican convention. I am so happy now. It’s almost like weeping has endured through the night, but joy cometh in the morning.

“And in many ways we see a new day dawning in America, a page being turned, and that is being represented by the kind of speakers you see before you in this convention. You’ve seen some of the best talent America has to offer, not in a partisan way, but people coming forward and giving their testimony to hope, to joy, to love, and to a vision of America that is so inclusive, that is so about bringing us together to heal,” Booker added.

The next step is to see how the Harris campaign in the race to the November election turns something aspirational — joy — into votes.

I asked Democratic consultant Karen Finney about how to leverage joy.

“No. 1, it means it's motivating and mobilizing, and that people are feeling excited and they're feeling joyful. But there's also a realization, you've got to act on that joy. And I think joy is more a powerful force that can actually move people to take action, which is important.”

Joy seems to me a way to battle Trump in an upbeat way.

By “talking about our joy,” Finney said, “there's sort of an implicit contrast in that because you're not hearing that from the other side. It is an implicit contrast because it — you know, when we talk about it's part of the future versus the past, without even saying it, because what you're hearing from the other side is... about relitigating old elections and old issues. And so by talking about our joy, it is about looking to the future without always having to say the future versus the past.”

Said Finney, when it comes to the politics of joy, “…The fun thing about it is there are people, there are some strategists who didn't think that it was going to work as a message or a strategy, but then they realized it's just what people are feeling. So let's lean into that.”