As Democrats learn to trust feelings again, let's second that emotion
The Democratic National Convention offers the latest evidence that the party is no longer downplaying the importance of emotional connection and positive feeling to political success
This piece was originally published at The Hot Screen.
For the pro-democracy majority, the last month of American politics has been not only dizzying but exhilarating. Months of gut-clenched gloom as President Joe Biden seemed unable to make his case against Trump (both pre- and post-debate) were swept away by Vice President Kamala Harris’s quick, joyful emergence as his successor, the emotional volatility among the Democratic base enough to launch a thousand future mass psychology studies.
But as Anand Giridharadas explores in an intriguing new piece, “The rise of the "Brat Pack" — and a new Democratic political style,” the changes in the Democratic presidential campaign that have inspired waves of optimism among voters aren’t just a result of the candidate switch. Alongside Harris’s ascension, he sees a new approach becoming dominant among Democratic campaign strategists and decision-makers, one that has traded a more staid and traditional notion of political communication for an active, multi-pronged engagement with voters. He identifies several key elements, including storytelling, understanding the importance of attracting and maintaining attention, and mobilizing the base as a way of bringing on board moderate voters instead of aiming campaigns squarely at (often unpersuadable, sometimes imaginary) median voters.
But one element above all others strikes me as the single most important: emotion. Giridharadas often seems to be speaking about the importance of appealing to the heart, not just the mind, and emotional engagement is the through-line linking several of the elements he identifies. Storytelling? There’s no decent political storytelling that doesn’t connect emotionally. Working to command people’s attention? Appealing to the emotions will always be key here. Making cultural connection, whether through art or campaign tchotchkes like some as-yet-undefined response to the MAGA baseball hat? Once again, emotional engagement would like a word. Even “reclaiming,” which Giridharadas describes as an effort by Democrats to take back from the Republicans ideas like patriotism and freedom, involves invoking profound emotions as much as profound ideas.
Full disclosure: I may be somewhat predisposed to focus on the centrality of emotion in the Democratic strategy changes that Giridharadas outlines. Over the past several years, I’ve repeatedly lamented the disparity between the GOP’s willingness to provoke the most extreme and dangerous sorts of emotionality among its base, on the one hand, and the Democrats’ reluctance to fully rouse their base, on the other. This has been most striking in the Democrats’ general eagerness to move on from the Trump years, even as the GOP continued to radicalize against democracy and to promote ever more extreme ideas, such as the notion that impoverished immigrants crossing the southern border actually constitute an invasion. The Democrats’ aversion to riling up their own base by fully alerting voters to the latent violence and authoritarian lunacy issuing from the Republican Party has been deeply frustrating to witness. At worst, it struck me as not only self-defeating but a dereliction of duty, leaving the American majority demoralized and unprepared to face the greatest internal threat to our democracy since the Civil War. To my mind, if the Democrats couldn’t figure out how to inspire voters, they could at least motivate them to the polls by scaring the hell out of them with visions of a rampaging MAGA movement.
An aversion to emotional appeals was likewise on display as Democrats shied not only from articulating a vision of a multiracial, egalitarian society to counter the white supremacist, misogynistic nightmares of the GOP, but also from encouraging Americans to celebrate and draw inspiration from the great progress we have already made in establishing such a society. Such choices were especially striking given what I believe are the powerful and positive feelings of accomplishment, pride, and hope that are, to be blunt, Americans’ due reward for the better society towards which we have collectively tended. Giving ourselves credit where credit is due is key to an attitude of optimism towards the future, and to building a durable pro-democracy majority.
Reading through Giridharadas’s take on what’s changed in Democratic thinking, we can see some preliminary answers as to why it took so long for Democrats to start doing what, to many of us, has been the right and obvious approach all along. He rightly points to the dominance of a mindset that prioritizes dry discussions of policy over grander narrative, an attitude that to me seems rooted in inertia and personal habits of mind among many Democratic pols. Giridharadas also notes that some Democrats actively disdained more emotionally-rooted appeals in reaction to the unbridled emotionality of Trump and the right, as if this fundamental distinction between the two sides needed to be maintained lest the pathologies of the MAGA movement infect the Democrats — as if the only emotions to be roused were the darker spirits of anger and resentment.
In Democrats’ defense, the way that primal emotions like hate and resentment have come to dominate the GOP means that Democrats have not been entirely crazy to worry about fighting fire with fire. After all, the GOP is Exhibit A for showing what happens when the darkest impulses come to possess an entire political party, as the most extreme attitudes and politicians have driven out any remaining GOP “moderation,” as a faction of right-wing wackos have become kingmakers in the Republican House caucus, and as a degenerate insurrectionist has claimed the GOP presidential nomination for the third time in a row.
But it is equally true that such bleak attitudes and emotions throughout the GOP did not emerge and develop out of nowhere, but rather have been assiduously cultivated by unscrupulous politicians and commentators for literally decades. For example, while many members of the Republican base may have harbored worries about demographic change that threatened the status of white Americans, it has been right-wing politicians and media that have assiduously inflamed such insecurities and prejudice into outright hatred of immigrants and minorities.
But the deliberate perversion of existing, inchoate sentiment into authoritarian passions on the right can also help remind us that acknowledgment and cultivation of mass feeling, when conducted in a healthier, ethical fashion, can also be a powerful pro-democratic force. When you listen to and validate what people are feeling, you are better positioned for their lived, emotional realities to inform your politics (both in terms of policy and rhetoric) — you are more responsive to their needs. For instance, in a time like ours, when much of the population feels worry and anxiety about the direction of the country, strong and moral leadership can help them identify grounds for optimism and solidarity. Giridharadas himself rightly zeroes in on this general concept when he observes that the new thinking in the Democratic Party says that they should “seek to compete with fascists for the emotional life of people, that you must take an organizer’s approach to helping people process a bewildering age and the dislocations of change and the resentments that come with progress and the pain of capitalist predation.”
This gives us a framework for understanding some of what has been happening with the Democratic base and other Democratic-leaning voters emotionally since Harris took her place as the party’s presumptive nominee. Harris did not simply conjure good feeling out of thin air, no matter how central her personal role has unquestionably been. She did not somehow implant certain sentiments in millions of Americans as if by magic. Rather, she and her campaign have spoken and acted in a way that has cultivated and unleashed feelings that were already latent in the populace. Democrats went from feeling down to feeling up based not just on her reassuring presence, but because Harris reminded them that there are good reasons to be hopeful about the future.
On top of this, Democratic optimism is very much rooted in an understanding of solidarity and community among millions of Americans — the optimism builds and sustains itself because each individual draws sustenance from knowing that millions of their fellow citizens are likewise energized and hopeful. This self-reinforcing mass energy, based on shared emotions, is what Democrats have been denying themselves and the American people by not more openly appealing to Americans’ hopes and fears in recent years. They have too often treated voters as isolated individuals rather than as members of a vast community that is already largely united behind powerful, forward-looking ideas that are cause for pride and excitement.
To get a bit more specific, let’s look at how the Harris campaign has addressed the anger and fear that many Americans feel about the extremist GOP. Rather than inciting Americans to hate their fellow citizens in the manner of Donald Trump, the Democratic campaign has directed — specifically towards Trump and J.D. Vance — a withering fusillade of contempt and mockery (the whole “weird” discourse features prominently here, which if nothing else is a way to appeal to people’s gut emotions). While they certainly also argue that the GOP ticket poses a threat to American values and freedom (thus engaging in the realm of ideas), their mocking rhetoric encourages emotions like contempt rather than fear or rage towards the GOP. This doesn’t mean that many millions of Americans don’t still (understandably) fear and hate Donald Trump, but the Harris campaign deserves credit for incentivizing Americans to feel and think about what we face in a way that’s both more empowering and more socially healthy. Where the Republican instinct is to dehumanize their political “enemies,” the Harris campaign’s approach is to paint their political opponents as all-too-human hot messes who merit laughter and scorn. This acknowledges the deep emotions many feel, while offering paths for expressing them that can lead to solidarity and optimism rather than fueling a spiral of hate.
And for a large-scale demonstration of the centrality of positive emotional appeals to the Harris campaign’s strategy, last week’s Democratic National Convention offered the most concentrated, sustained dose yet. Reporting from the scene, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch amusingly described witnessing a “natural high of ecstasy take hold on the floor” of the convention, as attendees danced, laughed, and otherwise celebrated the political event with happiness and high energy. In turn, this sense of energy and celebration was inescapable for those viewing the DNC at home. Events like Tuesday’s pop song-infused roll call dared to be silly, fun, and wild, creating a remarkable sense of spontaneity despite the careful choreography of the 50-state musical journey. At a primal level, the state of high happy emotion communicated all sorts of positive messages to viewers — that the Democratic Party is confident, that it is optimistic, that it is unafraid of whatever party-pooping insults the GOP might lob their way.
But this raucous atmosphere was much more than a free-floating invitation to Americans to (virtually) join a fun party; it was also a living demonstration that the values and policies of the Democratic Party are reason for celebration and happiness. These political ideas were specifically communicated by the stream of speakers each night of the convention, but I would point in particular to a pair of standout speeches — by Michelle Obama and Vice President Harris herself — as embodying appeals that linked emotional fire to political substance.
Michelle Obama carefully balanced straight talk about commonly-held anxieties about our political conflicts with a message of agency in determining our collective future; in doing so, she acknowledged that our emotional lives are central to successfully navigating this election, at both the individual and mass level. In a complementary fashion, Harris’s acceptance speech wove positivity, joy, determination, and optimism into an openly emotional campaign roadmap, though carefully grounded in repeated references to her prosecutorial, legislative, and executive experience. It aimed to infuse the listener with patriotic verve, cultural pride, and a sense of participating in a historic, vital movement into a promising future, even as she enumerated more substantive goals around greater economic opportunity and personal freedom.
Politics, like the human societies in which it’s embedded, is deeply informed by our emotional realities and experiences; ignoring this fact presents its own set of hazards and handicaps. In a democracy, pro-democracy parties should recognize that it’s vitally important to engage feelings that might otherwise run in more destructive directions, and that it’s fine to engage people’s emotions for socially beneficial purposes. Such emotional appeals bespeak a faith that the passions aroused will not end up burning down democracy, but rather are a necessary means to help achieve social solidarity and societal progress. It is an immensely hopeful sign that the Democrats are letting go of an overly cerebral approach to politics, in favor of one that recognizes that political engagement is as much a matter of the heart and psyche as it is of the cooly calculating brain.
Thanks for the kind words!
Agreed! Great piece.