New York Magazine Explores the 'Joyous Plot' to Elect Kamala Harris

Rebecca Traister has a really, really, really long piece in The New Yorker talking about the Kamala Harris campaign. Traister, acknowledging White Dudes for Kamala, is mostly interested in women: both women running for office and the women who support them. She talks about the huge fundraising Zoom call Women for Kamala and the growing number of chapters of Red, Wine & Blue, the Democrat answer to Moms for Liberty. It's a woman-led movement.

Traister had fond memories of the Women's March and pussy hats. She really likes to use the words "grassroots" and "organic" to describe the support for Harris, whom months before the Biden administration was talking about replacing because she was so unpopular and a drag on the ticket. Harris' nomination was really "organic" too, the way she managed to get it without any votes.

I read the whole thing, but really dropped out after hearing her describe Harris' "wacky laugh."

What Harris and her sprawling, stitched-together team were expert at was capably crowd-surfing the happy-to-be-there energy that rose to meet her, reflecting the release from purgatory right back at the cameras and crowds, flashing her enormous smile and letting loose her wacky laugh. “One of the superpowers that she has,” said [California senator Laphonza] Butler, “is all those videos out there of her dancing with young people, cussing, marching with workers on picket lines or talking about her experience at McDonald’s — it’s like the grass roots can see themselves in her.”
“Great organizers,” said [Ai-jen] Poo, “embody that Maya Angelou quote, which is that people don’t remember what you say; they remember how you made them feel.” Harris was making people feel good and hopeful about the future, and she seemed to understand in her gut how important that was to actually winning an election. Early on, CNN reported that veteran Democratic pollster Geoff Garin had advised the campaign to stop saying “We’re not going back” and using the term weird. Harris declined to follow Garin’s advice, CNN noted, asserting that she “wasn’t going to listen to the pollsters herself and would instead trust the instincts she had buried under self-doubt for so long.”
Those instincts told her to act like someone who was not just suddenly at the top of her party but part of a rowdy, happy coalition. She took the elation she was receiving from the crowds and made that energy the motif she would return to again and again: joy.

Much like brat summer, "joy" seems to have passed. After the debate, Harris and Tim Walz will embark on the "New Way Forward" tour. Artist Shepard Fairey of the Obama "Hope" poster chose the word "Forward" for his poster of Harris. I'll be interested to hear how the woman who's been vice president for nearly four years is going to chart a "new way forward." Why isn't she doing it now, as vice president? Biden's not running the country. She must have some idea who is.

A lot of people noticed it was Donna Barzile who'd posted the story.

New York Magazine Explores the 'Joyous Plot' to Elect Kamala Harris

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