Kamala Harris has lost her ‘joy’

Whatever happened to Kamala Harris’s promise of “joy”? Joy was in catastrophically short supply among her supporters I met last week. I’ve never encountered a more glee-less crew. It was all Nazi this, Nazi that, “The world is burning,” “We don’t want a rapist in the White House.” If this really is the “vibes” election, then the only vibe I got from these folk was clinical depression.

It is almost entirely negative: Vote Kamala or the world gets it

I saw them amassed on the streets outside Madison Square Garden in New York City last weekend where they had gathered to protest Donald Trump’s big rally. “Welcome to your Nazi rally!,” they jeered at Trump’s fans. An army of boomer men in Kamala caps and T-shirts stood on the steps to Penn Station holding little placards with one-word descriptions of the orange man they love to hate: “Rapist,” “Psychopath,” “Unfit.” It hardly roused the soul.

“Eat ass, Trump,” someone had scrawled in chalk on Eighth Avenue. “F**K TRUMP,” said a flag held aloft by the most mournful assembly of Antifa nerds I’ve ever seen. They were dressed in black, fittingly, given they were essentially at the funeral of their own sense of moral proportion. “If Trump wins, the world burns,” said one. I didn’t know whether to slap him or hug him.

You’d see Kamala cheerleaders outside Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue every day. You know the type: in anoraks, whatever the weather, covered in crazy badges, holding aloft four or five placards each, because why only have one? “F U Trump,” their signs cried. One wore a sticker saying: “Stop The Donald — let’s stop the disease once and for all.” One was left with the dystopian vision of a pandemic of fake-tanned fascism washing over this once great republic. Joy!

In Philadelphia, a gathering of Kamala campaigners warned passers-by of the consequences of a Trump victory. I heard the words “disastrous,” “tyranny,” “climate emergency.” You soon clocked that this is not a movement for Kamala, whether for her “joy” or her thin, ever-changing policy positions. No, it’s a campaign against Trump, which is to say against evil, which is how many of these political depressives view The Donald. It is almost entirely negative: Vote Kamala or the world gets it.

Joy has been well and truly jettisoned by the Democrats’ top dogs too. “I am TERRIFIED,” said Dems bigwig James Carville in an email yesterday. His “heart rate” is “SPIKING,” he said. So was mine after being bombarded by his all-caps panic. The source of his dread? The “dark money” that is “FLOODING” into this race and threatening to defeat the Dems standing for the Senate. If we lose, then everything we’ve fought for will “go RIGHT into the dumpster,” he yelled, as madly as any of those slogan-adorned Trump-phobes on Fifth Avenue. Mate, chill — it’s not the end of the world.

Or maybe it is. The Kamala-backing media is convinced that if she doesn’t get to the White House, then the rest of us might not get to live. A Trump victory could “reverberate for a million years” because this “oligarch” might “break the planet’s climate system,” says the Guardian. Nurse! A Trump victory would represent the “return of chaos” and a heightened “risk of cataclysm,” says a writer for Vox. Yeah, because the world is so stable right now.

‘Welcome to your Nazi rally!,’ they jeered at Trump’s fans

Harris herself slowly drifted from the “joy” thing. As even the BBC noted, she “moved from ‘joy’ to calling Trump ‘a fascist.’” Even the Los Angeles Times’ cringe-inducing gushing over Kamala’s celeb-heavy rally in Philadelphia last night — Oprah and Lady Gaga “bring back the joy.” it feebly insisted — cannot disguise that this is a campaign motored more by fear than joy. By a borderline apocalyptic dread. They’re pleading with voters not to let Kamala do her thing — whatever that might be — but rather to save the world from the fire and chaos of Trump. 

After a week in the US, I’m starting to understand Kamala’s famous laugh. It’s less the laughter of joy than the infernal laughter of the lost, lonely soul that has convinced itself the world is ending. Her campaign feels entirely dispiriting. It feels a tad undemocratic too, with voters reduced to the mere negators of “evil” rather than people who might get to choose a fresh direction for the nation. When I saw those brunching, bourgeois New Yorkers holler “Nazi” at the out-of-towners who’d come to see Trump, I understood instantly why so many voters choose The Donald over the alternative.

The sheer joylessness of the Kamala camp captures a truth about the modern-day Dems: they’re now little more than a rearguard movement against populism. They see it as their duty, less to lead the republic onto a shining new path, than to forcefield it from what they view as the swirling idiocies of Trump and his support base. They’re essentially promising to defend America from those Americans. What a bleak pit the “joyful” have dug for themselves.

Listen to more on Americano podcast. This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.