Bring the Joy
The fastest way to drive systemic change is to encourage others to join the movement. The Harris campaign provides clues for how this happens.
Americans are forward-looking, positive creatures. Smart politicians know this. It’s why successful campaigns paint a future vision that people can believe in, see themselves in, and rally behind. All Americans believe in freedom, which has to be why Kamala Harris chose it as the theme for her first ad.
The joy that radiates from this ad and the Harris campaign has been missing from our politics since Trump descended that golden escalator in 2015. From raising over $200 million in her first week campaigning to becoming the central character on the internet (see the memes), she’s made Democratic politics exciting and fresh for the first time since 2008, back when some of today’s voters were still in diapers.
Biden is an exceptional President, but by temperament and style, he’s a throwback to an earlier era. In many ways, so is Trump, who became famous in the 1980s, or before half of Americans today were even born. While there are too many changes since then to list, one that I keep coming back to is how much less formal our society is today—and how that informality is shaping our politics.
Adults today go by their first names and wear t-shirts to work. (Whenever someone asks for Mr. Siegel, I instinctively look for my Dad.) While Vice President Harris is a serious person with big ideas, she’s relatable: she wears Chucks, has an infectious laugh, is brat (?), and dances in public. We want—need—those who lead and inspire us to be like us. Trump may be a threat to democracy, but the fact that he and Vance are weird is a stronger political message.
There’s a lesson in this for all of us: foreground joy and relatability.
It’s impossible for me to watch the election vibes shift and not think about the weight and negativity that surround the climate conversation. Instead of empowering people with agency and optimism, experts often fall back on the counterproductive trifecta of:
Being a scold who focuses on how screwed we are;
Droning on about how bad the impacts will be if we don’t transform society immediately; and/or
Being the know-it-all who points out that the action people are taking in their personal lives don’t really matter because they don’t address the “right” part of the problem.
Just like Harris changed the political vibes, we need to change the vibes around climate change. Society is ready to feel good and optimistic again. Doomerism is a self-fulfilling prophecy that we need to move beyond. The climate is in trouble, but the tools we need to transform and improve society are here, waiting for us to use them. We have a job to do. Let’s get to work.