Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz arrive for a campaign rally in Philadelphia on Aug. 6.Joe Lamberti/The Associated Press
There’s an episode of The Simpsons in which Marge and a few other women create an investment club, but when Marge’s risk aversion annoys the others, they kick her out. The remaining club members buy a slick pita franchise, while Marge invests in a sad-sack “Pretzel Wagon.”
When she pulls up outside the power plant, Homer dutifully hollers to his co-workers and everyone rushes outside, where Marge has her modest wares arrayed on a folding table. That’s when the other women roar up in their gleaming Fleet-a-Pita truck, blasting Fleetwood Mac’s Don’t Stop.
“Wow, look at that van!” Lenny exclaims. “It looks like it doesn’t even need our business.”
So, everyone stampedes over to buy lunch from the food truck that doesn’t give them a case of the sads.
A lot of what’s going on in American politics right now is about how the Democrats have wrested themselves out of a Pretzel Wagon and into a shiny pita truck.
Put simply: Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, her new running-mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and their supporters look like they’re having a blast.
They look confident and fun, even a bit punchy. The campaign’s meme game is epic. They pack rallies with fans so hepped up on momentum and inside jokes that they simultaneously feed the candidates on stage with their energy and adoration, and eat right out of the duo’s hands. The internet is so smitten with Mr. Walz that it’s starting to get awkward.
This is, as the governor himself has said, the politics of joy. After two and a half election cycles of American politics as dark and heavy as an oil spill, watching people on the national stage have palpable fun at it feels like gleeful decadence.
Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz made their first appearance together as the Democratic ticket at a rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday, where she gave him a glowing introduction.
“Thank you, Madame Vice-President, for the trust you’ve placed in me,” Mr. Walz said. “But maybe more so, thank you for bringing back the joy.”
Just 41 calendar days stood between that ecstatic rally and Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump in Atlanta.
That debate forced several things into merciless focus: Mr. Biden’s decline; that the Democrats had made a terrible miscalculation in sticking with him; and that the re-election of the former president was swiftly becoming a when and not an if.
While the blue team was frozen in that miserable limbo as Mr. Biden refused to step aside, the Republicans, polls smiling upon them, gathered for their Milwaukee convention giving thanks to the divine power that everyone seemed certain had saved Mr. Trump from an assassination attempt.
The GOP was whooping it up at a tent revival while the Democrats sniffled through a poorly attended wake. There’s no better evidence of this than Mr. Trump picking J.D. Vance as his vice-presidential candidate – a prematurely spiked football in human form that everyone already seems to regret.
Ms. Harris, meanwhile, ascended unchallenged to her party’s nomination a scant two and a half weeks ago. Since then, truckloads of donor dollars, perfectly co-ordinated expressions of public support from every Democratic star in the bright blue sky, happy polls and blanket news coverage have followed merrily along.
And then this week, Ms. Harris named Mr. Walz as her running mate, and he showed up at the barbecue with a bouncy castle, an ice cream truck and a very good Bruce Springsteen tribute band in tow.
According to a fascinating New York Times feature on the vice-president deliberations, Ms. Harris’s advisers concluded that she could win with any of the three finalists – Mr. Walz, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly – and so she went with the guy she found “joyful,” loyal and straight-up likeable.
Beforehand, a group of political organizers had produced an extensive document making the case for Mr. Walz, using a hilarious mix of hard-nosed political strategy and the sort of stuff your mom might write to recommend your wonderful self to an employer.
“With his ambitious agenda, impressive legislative accomplishments wrapped up in a football coach and dad persona, people fall in love with him,” they wrote. “There will be memes.”
Hoo boy, yeah.
There’s Mr. Walz cuddling a piglet in such a way that it’s impossible to say who’s more blissed out. There’s a video of him being hug-swarmed by little kids as he signs legislation for school food programs.
And then you have Mr. Walz and his daughter Hope Walz at the Minnesota State Fair last September, bantering like an old comedy duo. How about a corndog, governor dad suggested, and his daughter reminded him that she’s vegetarian.
“Turkey then!” Mr. Walz announced. “Turkey’s meat,” Ms. Hope explained, for what seemed like it was probably the 47th time. Her dad fired back, “Not in Minnesota.”
Mr. Walz has also proved an extremely effective – and affable – attack dog, credited with coining the “weird” Republican label that perfectly encapsulates the upending of this campaign. As Monica Hesse wrote in The Washington Post, “What if, instead of being admired or feared, they are instead being laughed at? What if, instead of edgelords, they are actually just the kids in the corner eating glue off their hands?”
That’s the thing about levelling weird as a political insult: Weird doesn’t take its target seriously as some dark, winged force of evil – it just rolls its eyes, laughs and goes on with its day. Weird is joy giving someone a noogie.
At that debut rally in Pennsylvania, Mr. Walz earned one of the biggest roars when he roasted Mr. Vance’s blue-collar bona fides, then said he couldn’t wait to debate him – “If he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.” (In case this subplot escaped you, someone on X invented a rumour that in his bestselling book Hillbilly Elegy, Mr. Vance confessed to a romantic interlude involving couch cushions and a latex glove.)
Of course, memes, vibes and inside jokes are not votes. They’re not funds raised or canvasses walked or serious issues debated. Memes, vibes and jokes are what they are – and what they are is energy, attention and fun. It’s people having a good time watching you do your thing and wanting a piece of it.
Political joy – even peddled by a canny operation that surely knows exactly what it’s doing – is pulling up in a shiny pita van blaring feel-good music and having people lined up waiting for you before you even throw the parking brake.