Some Perspective After the DNC Hangover

The 2024 Democratic National Convention was, by most ways you could look at it, a shockingly spectacular success, even if Beyonce' and Taylor Swift didn't show (and, really, they'd have been in the way). The absolute exuberance on display made it plain that President Joe Biden's decision to step aside and not seek reelection had unclenched the anxiety-puckered anuses of the Democrats, and that let them be able to cut loose, open one extra button on the shirt, loosen the belt, and have a great fucking time. The process of anointing Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz as the Democratic ticket was masterfully conceived and executed, and its purpose was clear: You wanna really make America great again? Kick Trump and his MAGA motherfuckers into the shitcan of history. 

To put it another way, the message was "Don't you want the crazy shit over with? Don't you just wanna go back to normal?" And that's a damn fine message 

So much of it was just energizing, hitting the right spot like a well-placed vibrator. Harris's speech was a solid Democratic wish list, with a few specific things. Mostly, she's going to keep going on Biden's trajectory, with maybe a few twists, because Biden's agenda has been really successful, even if most Americans don't know it. It just felt good to watch someone who can explain that shit in a straightforward way and who isn't a fucking lunatic. Harris has fully come into her own as the nominee for president, embodying the energy and hope that has been unleashed in the last month. And we needed that in ways that we didn't even realize.

Mostly, I was totally into it, often slobberingly so, if you read the other two posts I've done on the convention. I stand by those. Biden got it up one last time to kick some ass. Michelle Obama was the best speaker of the whole thing. And the whole event was filled with highlights. 

The biggest "fuck those fuckers" of the DNC was the concerted effort to take back American identity - the iconography, the symbols, the chants. Unlike previous times when Democrats wanted to out-patriot Republicans, it wasn't cringe or in shitty taste. Because Donald Trump is a convicted felon and a rapist, and because he led an insurrection on January 6, and because he regularly denigrates the country, including the military, it was easy for the Democratic Party to steal back the patriotism trophy. You wanna know who loves the country? The fucking party that doesn't celebrate the dickholes who stormed the Capitol to stop the certification of the 2020 election. You wanna know who sides with the military? The party that celebrates their elected veterans. Between the flags being waved and the chants of "USA! USA!," a casual viewer might have thought they turned into a Republican gathering. That is, until the cameras panned the faces in the crowd and saw the incredible diversity of the people waving and chanting. Instead of just one very white segment of the country claiming the mantle of patriotism, it was almost all of us represented there, the real United States. 

Other individual moments just hit hard for me. I couldn't adore Tim Walz's family more, and his son, Gus, sobbing and pointing while yelling for everyone around, "That's my dad!" was simply pure and honest love and emotion. It was a distillation of how this event was a catharsis for Democrats, a release, an exhalation, and a good cry. And all of the cockmites of the right who tried to degrade Gus for having feelings are just showing that they don't understand the true meaning of the very idea of family they lie about championing. (And the fact that Gus is neurodivergent doesn't matter here. You're allowed to love your parents unabashedly.)

Speaking of catharsis, for a whole bunch of us, seeing the Chicks up there performing the National Anthem was some kind of sweet vengeance. If you don't know the saga of how the then-Dixie Chicks had their superstardom squashed in a wholly bullshit controversy in 2003, then do yourself a favor and read about it. Every single right-winger who whines about "cancel culture" would have been part of the gabbling mob who demanded the blood of anyone who criticized the war in Iraq. The restoration of the Chicks as genuine American icons was long time coming. 

The other highlights for me belonged to the speakers who demonstrated how Republican policies and politicians affect the very real lives of very real, everyday people. The appearance of four of the Central Park 5, the Black and Hispanic men who were accused as teens of a horrific rape in 1989 and were later exonerated, reminded us not just of how shitty Donald Trump has been for his entire life (he took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for them to receive the death penalty) but also of how the criminal justice system mistreats non-white people. Others, like those who were affected by gun violence and those who have suffered because of the repeal of Roe v. Wade, reminded us that this shit is personal. If Republican fuckery hasn't taken something away from you yet, it's just a matter of time before it does. 

All of that was terrific and necessary and heartening. But one reason I waited for a couple of days to comment any more on the DNC is because I wanted the drunk feeling of ecstasy to pass and I wanted to recover from the hangover after. I'm not trying to kill the joy buzz. I love it. I want us to ride the joy wave into fully taking back the federal government and at least a few more states. Still, some bullshit must be acknowledged, if for no other reason than to understand when that bullshit potentially comes back to bite us on our joy-brimming asses.

For example, the lack of a Palestinian-American speaker was shameful. For most voters, it's not a deal-breaker, if they even noticed. But if Harris was going to make the statement she ended up making about the war in Gaza, having someone with family under threat speaking to the delegates would have framed it more poignantly. The delegate who was ready to go, Ruwa Romman, a state representative from Georgia, had a speech that would have emphasized the suffering of Gazans, but also mentioning freeing the hostages held by Hamas and how important other issue are to Muslim voters. 

It would have been a simple gesture that would have gone a long, long way to getting out a message about inclusivity, that the tent is large enough to encompass such difference, and that freedom of speech means including speech that everyone might not agree with (although what Romman wanted to say was not really any different from what Sen. Raphael Warnock, the parents of a Hamas hostage, and Harris herself said). But she was denied by the convention organizers. I get that one "from the river to the sea" yelled from the stage would have been exploited by the right. But there's no way that Romman, who is an ambitious politician with a real future, would have said that because it would undermine the credibility of the group she was representing, Uncommitted, a new organization that has a chance to make some real inroads on US policy towards Israel and Palestine. 

Along the same lines, the complete erasure of transgender speakers or issues was also significant. Yes, the transgender population in the United States is small, but issues related to transgender rights loom large in the political discourse. Hell, just before the convention began, the Supreme Court refused to lift a block on the Biden administration's new rule saying that Title IX covers transgender students. Trans people are literal and figurative punching bags on the right; they are victims of violence and the subject of a stream of laws attempting to make their treatment and existence illegal, especially when it comes to trans youth. And they deserved a couple of minutes to assert their right to live their lives unimpeded by the government. "Mind your own damn business" could certainly apply to those attacking the parents of trans kids.

And I gotta be an old school liberal here for a minute. I'm all for loving your country, but I'm a little uncomfortable with the flag-waving and chanting of "USA." I'm conflicted in that I do love taking that away from conservatives, but I just want to be cautious that the patriotism doesn't tilt into jingoism. I'm not being churlish for the sake of churlishness. I loved the state pride in the roll call, for example. But patriotism can end up being used as a convenient cover for lots of sins and a cudgel on those who dissent.

Along those lines of discomfort, I was frankly put off by the constant emphasis on the military and the promise to keep military spending high (and I don't mean veterans care, which should be more highly-funded). But the prime time part of the DNC avoided much talk about people living in poverty, beyond mentions about how the expanded tax credit took kids out of poverty. We have issues with people suffering from hunger and too many people who are unhoused. Sure, Harris promises more housing, but that's targeted at the middle class. Keeping the military "the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world" isn't nearly as important to me as expanded poverty programs like job training and community development. If the emphasis on the military was a way to appeal to Republicans or those mythical "independents," well, honestly, I'd rather expand the Democratic voter base to bring in the vast numbers of those with low incomes who don't vote. 

And one final thing, as long as I've already pissed you off: Yes, Harris's speech was very good, very much of the moment, very attuned to the vibes that came from the convention floor and the snowballing anti-MAGA movement. But it was also a cautious speech, one that didn't take any big policy swings. We're no longer talking about Medicare for All; instead, we're talking about lowering the cost of health care. Again, there's nothing wrong with that, but it surely doesn't take care of one of the most pressing ills in this country, medical debt. You can argue that this cautious approach is a way of getting back to normal, of continuing to recover from Trump and the pandemic, but you could also argue that this moment of great unity in the Democratic Party is a time to take a big swing or two. 

Look, I'm not saying that any of this takes away from what was, truly, possibly the most successful DNC of my lifetime. I get that it had to be cautious even in its exuberance (and especially after the incredibly daring change of the person at the top of the ticket). And I'm totally on board with getting past the election, killing the MAGA demon, and growing from there, all with a sense of joy and recommitment to what it means to be American. I see that as a strategy, and I hope that's what it is. I like Harris and Walz. I desperately want them to win. I just don't want caution and return to the previous normal to become the most we can hope for.  

Michelle Obama Shows How It's Done

In her pre-recorded speech for the Covid-limited 2020 Democratic National Convention, former First Lady Michelle Obama explained one of her standard lines about dealing with your opponent: "Over the past four years, a lot of people have asked me, 'When others are going so low, does going high still really work?' My answer: going high is the only thing that works, because when we go low, when we use those same tactics of degrading and dehumanizing others, we just become part of the ugly noise that’s drowning out everything else. We degrade ourselves. We degrade the very causes for which we fight." She went further, saying, "But let’s be clear: going high does not mean putting on a smile and saying nice things when confronted by viciousness and cruelty...Going high means standing fierce against hatred while remembering that we are one nation under God...And going high means unlocking the shackles of lies and mistrust with the only thing that can truly set us free: the cold hard truth." And then she said her harshest line of the speech: "So let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can. Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country," which isn't all that harsh, really, although she gave reasons why she believed that, especially highlighting the chaos caused by Trump during the pandemic's early days.

I've been critical about Obama's belief in "going high" because it simply seems quaint and unsuited to the moment, part of an imagined time in politics that really never existed but we like to pretend it did. But that speech demonstrated a small but significant shift in tone for Obama, from a seeming refusal to denigrate an opponent to stating, essentially, that Trump is a motherfucker and he will fuck mothers because that's what motherfuckers do. 

Last night, in person while getting a deservedly worshipful reception at the 2024 DNC in Chicago, her hometown, Michelle Obama's version of "going high" evolved even further. I don't think she gave up on the notion, as some have said. I just think she showed how to disembowel Trump with a stiletto rather than a chainsaw. You can do it without calling Trump "weird" or "crazy" but by demonstrating how he's both of those things. You can do it by treating him like a petulant child in need of a long time out (preferably in a small cell) and you can do it by showing how this shit is personal.

Obama eviscerated Trump's entire career with a simple phrase: "the affirmative action of generational wealth." It's got a side benefit of eviscerating RFK, Jr., too. She put it in terms that everyone there could understand, explaining how capitalism privileges those with that kind of wealth: "If we bankrupt the business or choke in a crisis, we don’t get a second, third, or fourth chance. If things don’t go our way, we don’t have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead. No. We don’t get to change the rules so we always win. If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top." 

Yes, the Obamas are extremely rich now. But they didn't inherit it. They busted their asses from humble beginnings. Obama pointed out how Trump's skewed sensibilities make him so vile: "For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. See, his limited narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hard-working and highly educated, successful people who happen to be black. I want to know, who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those black jobs? Look, it’s his same old con, doubling down on ugly, misogynistic, racist lies as a substitute for real ideas and solutions that will actually make people’s lives better." Obama wasn't holding back, but she was carving Trump up in the most "going high" way possible: using the insults to pump everyone up and hit them in the heart and the brain. It was kind of brilliant, as was the pivot to how Kamala Harris is the very opposite of that decadent, louche, ignorant asshole. 

Again, like Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton the night before, here was a party elder (I know she's just a few years older than Kamala Harris) saying, "Yes, go for Trump's neck and bite into those saggy orange labial folds and take him down." They took different routes there, Biden more personally angry, Clinton with more of a done-with-his-shit attitude. But Michelle Obama's speech, which will likely be the most-remembered from this convention (not the least because she is an electrifying speaker), asked us to turn away from Trump and all his petty shit and lies and bloviation and turn to each other to finish the job, that electing Harris has the effect of watching someone who has been sliced with a stiletto come to realize he's been gutted before he could do anything to stop it. That's some going high I can get behind. 

Joe Biden's Gifts to the Democratic Party and to the United States

Look, I don't know whether or not President Joe Biden is pissed off about giving in to the pressure put on him to drop out. If I were to venture a guess, I'd say that one thing he's angry about is that he didn't get to punch Donald Trump in his stupid, bulbous Tang-toned face. Rhetorically, of course. He wanted a knockout on Election Day. But rather than boxing, this has become tag-team wrestling, with Biden high-fiving Vice President Kamala Harris to enter the ring and finish the job.

If there is one thing that has come through since Biden first started running for president in April 2019, it's that he fucking hates Donald Trump. I mean, viscerally, savagely hates Trump with his whole body and soul. Even before Trump and his shit-flinging lunatic brigade decided to try to destroy Joe Biden by eviscerating his son, Hunter, Biden has held Trump in contempt, palpably disgusted that Trump even exists, let alone that he actually was able to become president and wreck Biden's beloved federal government. Biden destroyed Trump in 2020, but he left Trump strong enough to return, and so Biden wanted to, as he said so often when he was running, finish the job.

At the Democratic National Convention last night, Biden gave what was likely a variation of what would have been his acceptance of the nomination, turning into a valedictory speech, taking the well-earned victory lap on everything that he accomplished. He is absolutely one of the most consequential presidents in history. He took us from the depths of a pandemic that had been exacerbated in lives and in the economy by the rank incompetence and rampant narcissism of Donald Trump and raised us up. He pulled us back, using all the skill and tenacity he had accumulated and earned in his many decades in DC. 

Unencumbered by having any fucks left to give or needing to resupply his fucks for the future, Biden bore into Trump. In his 2020 DNC speech, Biden didn't say Trump's name. He didn't use the word "lie." He was aghast at what Trump had done as president, but he kept that personal hatred in check. Now, in 2024, after years of Republicans denigrating him and his family, he didn't have to pretend to be above it all. The working class kid could drag the rich dick into the street and brawl him there. He said, "In America, they’re safer today than when we were under Donald Trump.  Trump continues to lie about crime in America, like everything else" and "Trump continues to lie about the border" and "Typically Trump — once again putting himself first and America last."

The abject rage came out when Biden talked about Trump's routine and unrepentant denigration of the military. He fumed, "Who in the hell does he think he is?  Who does he think he is?" And he continued, "They are the words of a person not worthy of being commander in chief, period.  Not then, not now, and not ever." Biden brought up how Trump says he won't accept the election results if he loses (again) and that it will be a "bloodbath." "If anybody else said that in the past, you’d think he was cra- — he is crazy," Biden said, "but you’d think it was an exaggeration.  But he means it."

One of the gifts Biden gave to the Democratic Party and to the United States last night was that his remarks implied a blessing for the end of Democratic hesitancy to dive into insults and attacks, that the language of politicians, especially presidential candidates, had to stay elevated and high-minded, even when going negative. To their eternal credit, Harris and her campaign said, "Fuck that." When traditional consultants said she and Tim Walz shouldn't use "weird," she said, "Fuck that," and leaned into it. By finally being so open in such a high-profile setting about calling out lies and craziness, Biden was telling Harris, the Democrats, and the rest of us, "Fuck that. Take this asshole down any way you can." Hillary Clinton did the same in her speech, especially when she didn't try to silence the chants of "Lock him up." Her smile and nod was as clear as if she said, "Fuck you, Donald." Adios to going high when they go low. Let's get in the gutter and rumble.

Another gift Biden gave the nation was that, whatever he was feeling in private, his public statements on giving up on his re-election have demonstrated grace, self-awareness, and, above all, patriotism in its purest sense, not in the hateful, nationalist perversion of it that the GOP has contorted patriotism into. "I love the job, but I love my country more," he said. And then later in the speech, "I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my career, but I gave my best to you.  For 50 years, like many of you, I’ve given my heart and soul to our nation." That's one of the most meaningful things Biden will leave us with: the presidency doesn’t belong to a person. It belongs to the people. And the nation itself takes work, the work of all of us, not one person. 

Finally, Biden passed the torch at the end to Kamala Harris. And if this story ends like it's supposed to, with the orange hell-giant defeated by a spontaneous movement of a unified people, with Harris, the first woman president, triumphant and, recognizing the path forward is not going to be easy or without conflict, the belief in our national soul restored, this country could never thank Joe Biden enough for the gift of this joyful rejuvenation of the American spirit. 

Arrogant Dipshit JD Vance Goes to Michigan

Kent County in western Michigan is anchored by Grand Rapids and it's the fourth most populous county out of 83 in the state. (Yes, that is too many fucking counties.) Byron Center is a suburb of Grand Rapids, just 20 minutes from downtown, not some rural enclave. You'd have to be a vapid couchfucking clown to pretend otherwise. 

So, of course, JD Vance, the vice presidential candidate and Yale Law School's most embarrassing grad since Samuel Alito, acted like he was out in a field in the ass-end of nowhere, which does exist in Michigan, but without easy access to a decent airport. Vance was there to give a speech to the extremely white locals (the town is like 95% white) sitting outside at a trucking company. And by "speech," I mean, "bitching about bullshit." 

Vance, who always sounds like a smug asshole trying to talk so the yahoos understand what he's saying, blathered about allegedly horrific damage done to places like Byron Center by the Biden/Harris administration: "Byron Center has been cast aside, and a lot of places in this country have been cast aside by America’s ruling class in Washington D.C. Now, politicians come into places like Michigan. They say nice things, but they crush our industries, they offshore our jobs, and they undercut American wages with illegal labor. You, my friends, have been betrayed." 

Betrayed how exactly? The unemployment rate in Kent County is 4%. It's one of the lowest in the state, ranking sixth out of, once again, 83 counties. The median income in the county is $77k. The poverty rate is 10%, lower than the state or the country. The population is growing there and expected to keep growing. Home ownership is at 75%. And all of those trends have improved or stayed steady during the Biden administration. So what the fuck is Vance even talking about? And what the fuck were the gathered white people clapping for? Oh, wait. There has been an uptick in the number of immigrants, and the population is getting more diverse. That must be the fucking nightmare. 

By the way, Kent County went for Biden in 2020, 52 to 46 percent. He won Grand Rapids by over 30 points. He's the first Democrat to win by a margin that big there since LBJ. Obama won by just 2000 votes in 2008. 

Since Vance is running with Donald Trump, a man for whom the truth and reality are as sacred as wedding vows, of course he lied continuously. Here's what the gopher-looking motherfucker said about electric vehicles and battery manufacturing: "[Harris] supported these EV mandates that taxed you, took your money, and sent it to electric vehicles that are made in China instead of made right here in the state of Michigan, destroying thousands of Michigan auto jobs in the process. And it’s not just the car jobs themselves. Y’all know this. It’s the carburetors. It’s the transmissions. It’s the people who are making the components. They are the ones who suffer when Kamala Harris sends your tax dollars to Chinese-made cars." Just to put on my perfesser hat for a hot sec, the way the end of that is stated makes it sound like carburetors and transmissions are suffering, which is, yeah, weird.

But, see, the Biden administration (and, sorry, Harris is not president right now) is helping Michigan get massive investment from companies so that, according to one analysis, the state will be one of three that will "dominate" EV battery manufacturing by 2030. The state has received billions of dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act and from auto corporations. There have definitely been some bumps along the way (as there always are), not the least of which is Republican antagonism to electric vehicles, as if there's something anti-American and un-manly about them. No, they don't go "vroom." But the future is going to involve EVs, and you're either ready for that future or you can go fuck yourself into poverty with your carburetor.

Also, being Trump's mate means that everything your opposition does is either the worst thing in the history of everything or it's a hoax of some sort. Beardy Buzzkill here said, "When she does these rallies and does these events and does these fake dances, remember that there are parents who lost their children to drugs or violence who will never see their children move again, much less dance again." Honestly, that's like some asshole on social media who says, "Yeah, but what about climate change?" when you post that you had a good time with your husband this past weekend. And, for fuck's sake, Trump enters every Nazi rally of his by doing the double hand-job boogie, waddling like a walrus on a floating dock, and the gathered Nazis cheer like he's Simone Biles doing her floor routine. That's a fake fucking dance.

The bitterness that Vance and Trump have towards Harris is stunning, like they're insulted that they have to run against a non-white woman. Vance went on, "Everything about her campaign is fake, a fake joy that comes from being promoted to a new position, instead of using the position you already have to do your job and make the lives of the citizens of this country better. It’s a fake ticket that never earned a single Democrat primary vote. It’s a fake platform that offers no specifics about how to do the people’s businesses, and a fake promise to change the government." You know, it takes a level of self-delusion that approaches psychopathic to call anyone or anything "fake" when you are running for office alongside someone who has been found, multiple times, to have committed actual fucking fraud. 

In the entire speech, Vance put forward almost no policies while criticizing Harris for running on slogans instead of policies. The idea that was just, well, weird was that the way to control inflation is to stop printing so much money. No, really: "We ought to do is stop printing trillions of dollars that we don’t have and sending it to China. We should keep our money right here at home, build in America, buy in America, manufacture in America, and that gives Americans the wages necessary. But it also means that you’re not printing a bunch of money, which makes our dollar more and more worthless." Yes, money has been printed at a higher rate (which doesn't necessarily mean actually making more bills, but releasing...you know what? Google that shit) but that's because the world relies on the dollar and needs more dollars. To say it's a major factor in inflation is just one of those things you put out there because stupid people understand it (not to mention that inflation is way down now).

This was in answer to a question (from the Epoch Times, so fuck them generally) that was simple: "What other steps besides drilling can the Trump-Vance administration take to lower those grocery prices for people?" Other than not printing more money, Vance had nothing. Not a single goddamn idea. I mean, shit just got embarrassing when he was asked by a local reporter what the Trump campaign would do in Kent County specifically to get votes and his answer was, more or less, "Fuck all." He really replied, "We think, look, the entire state of Michigan is important, right?" And then he talked about how they want votes in Detroit so they're working more there, which is always what someone in Grand Rapids wants to hear. One topic that he avoided was women since everything he says about women is some Handmaid's Tale-level oppression and subservience. 

JD Vance is a fucking empty-headed weirdo, to be sure. But he's also an arrogant, preening dipshit desperately attempting to sound smart, folksy, and tough, like Trump without whatever panache we used to ascribe to Trump. He's the gleeful fuck toy of billionaires (or putative billionaires), and he seems to relish the role of trying to be as cruel and dismissive of any opposition as Trump is, all while attempting to act like he gives a damn about other humans.

But, goddamn, he's so fucking transparent about it that everyone can see right through him. 

Harris/Walz: We Need This Joy

Something occurred to me while watching yesterday's rally in Philadelphia kicking off the campaign for the full 2024 Democratic ticket of current Vice President Kamala Harris for president and Governor Tim Walz for vice president. It occurred to me while watching Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who had been considered a frontrunner for the VP job, pumping up the crowd like the greatest hype man in history. It occurred to me when Harris introduced Walz to a nation that, beyond those of us damned to be terminally online in the political world, knew very little about him. It occurred to me when Walz, all big  dad energy, scolded the Republicans, Donald Trump and JD Vance, for their deprivations and degradations while telling the gathered 10,000 people how they needed to get out on that field and beat the cross-town rivals. It occurred to me as I felt myself getting caught up in the excitement of the moment, with the expected cheers and spontaneous chants from the audience at Temple University. And it kept occurring to me today as I saw the elated crowds in Eau Claire and Detroit.

It was simple. I thought, "Man, we need this." And by "this," I mean all the joy and energy and possibility being embodied on that stage. But it's not only about this moment. We need this because the one thing that's been missing as we emerged from the worst part of the Covid pandemic (and recognizing that Covid is still very much a problem) is a catharsis, some release where we all recognize that we survived. And it's not just a catharsis for getting through the lockdowns and mass deaths and required health safety measures. It's a catharsis for surviving the presidency of Donald Trump, which took this country down some incredibly dark alleys, leaving it battered and weary, with a good deal of PTSD.

We couldn't actually celebrate, or even fully exhale, because hanging over all of us was the tension of what would bring the Trump saga to its end. We waited for something to validate the anger we had and to demonstrate that things would be different. We hoped that Trump would be convicted and sent to prison, but that didn't happen and may not. 

The election of Joe Biden was an absolutely necessary step to get to this point. We needed someone who knew how the federal government worked inside and out, an old hand to get to the bridge and right the ship, weld the holes, scrub off the rust, get rid of the piles of garbage, and get us back on course, all while restocking the bar. We were all scared out of our weary minds in 2020, awaiting the even deadlier next surge of Covid deaths that was coming in January 2021. Then January 6th happened, and our sense of security in the very things that are supposed to function in this country were undermined, all while watching a large percentage of the population go down a red-capped abyss of crazy and conspiracies they will likely never return from. Biden's skill was in allowing the rest of us to chill out, to see that the government hadn't lost the ability to actually work.

In the last few months, though, everything kept hitting us, even as Trump was found guilty or liable, owing hundreds of millions of dollars. All of it still didn't lead us to anything like a feeling of completion, a feeling we could, indeed, move on. We were hit again and again with insane Supreme Court decisions, with the polls that showed Biden losing, with Biden's obvious signs of aging, with this feeling that it was all going to go south again. We would stick by Biden if we had to (and more than a few were doing so gladly), but, my god, we needed celebration. We needed joy. Real joy, not the kind of joy that says, "We made it," but the joy that says, "We crushed it." We need to face our American demons, who are easily identifiable, and we need to unify to exorcise them and send them back to whatever crevices in the earth they crawled out of, not just defeat them at the polls. 

So, yeah, it's more than a little over-the-top to say this, but I got that feeling from the Harris/Walz rally yesterday, from the ecstasy with which people are reacting to this ticket. We suffered a mass trauma, both physical and psychological, from Covid, compounded by the savage incompetence and wanton cruelty of the Trump administration. And the effects of that trauma haven't been dealt with. 

But maybe this is how we heal: by coming together in joyful purpose, to laugh and mock and chant and celebrate, all in service of unifying to keep progressing, to make sure that the hard work that's been done doesn't get wasted by another Republican president, like Bill Clinton's work was wrecked by Bush, like Obama's work was wrecked by Trump. God, imagine how incredible it will be for Biden to hand it off to Kamala Harris, with no Republican in the middle to ruin it all first. God, imagine how amazing it will be to know that so many of us came together, all these disparate areas of the left, all these generations, all these races and genders and identities, for once not bothering with the in-fighting that divides us every election season, to make this happen. We can get back to all those difficult discussions about what direction we should go once we can exhale without that feeling that it's all about to end terribly.

This isn't just about vibes. It's about our deep need to feel connected again, to not just wander in our algorithm-induced scrolling comas, but to see that all that we have been through means something and can achieve something. It's a desire for authenticity, for modernity, for an embrace of who we really are. And it's a desire for normalcy again. God, we know we can never go back to what was before Trump and before Covid, but let us come up with a way to tell the delusional, harmful, weird GOP that we're done being afraid of the phantoms they demand we fear. 

In our Harris and Walz-induced joy is our strength. 

Hope and Weirdness on the Campaign Trail in 2024

As much as I still viscerally despise former president, shitty artist, and war criminal George W. Bush, the man pretty much nailed it early on when, referring to the inauguration speech of Donald Trump on January 20, 2017, he said, "That was some weird shit." That speech, where Trump shit all over the three presidents gathered there and talked about "American carnage," was genuinely weird in that "Why the fuck is he talking about all that in this dickish way?"

It's not the first time anyone called Trump "weird." On his show, John Oliver has regularly gone off about Trump's innate strangeness. And Trump's behavior has always been on the creepy side of weird. I know she's regretted not saying anything, but I do wonder how things would have gone if Hillary Clinton had stopped in the middle of an answer at her second debate, a town hall with Trump in 2016, when he was stalking behind her, so close she could hear his labored breathing and huffing as she answered a question, and said, "Back up, you creep. Get away from me." They probably would have accused her of being hysterical because that's how shitty and sexist the media was towards Clinton. 

And, you know, a bunch of out here in the filthy environs of the internets, with our blogstackletters or whatever, have gone off for years about the unending fucking weirdness of Donald Trump and his crazed followers. I haven't been shy about calling a weirdo a fucking weirdo. When he started hugging the American flag like it was the teddy bear his prick of a father took away from him when he was two, I wrote, "It was weird. No, that's not strong enough. It was fucking weird. Disturbing even that such an overtly simple-minded move could garner such a strong reaction, that while the left passes around photos of it to mock, the right sends it around with pride. Hell, the White House tweeted the picture with the single word, 'America!' Which is just even weirder. I wasn't triggered or anything. I just thought, 'How fucking pathetic. Of him. Of everyone there.' And how, for lack of another phrase, fucking weird."

It's been one of those things that some of us have wanted his opponents to emphasize because bullying always has supporters and racism is just built into the right. Sure, the line "this is not normal" became a thing, a way of responding to the broad array of fuckery committed by the Trump administration, but also to the rhetoric coming from the MAGA movement and the GOP. But that didn't really capture the essence of what so many of us were feeling and saying (although, you know, "abnormal" might have been fun) because it really is just so strange to see the Republican Party transform itself into a giant machine that is at the service of a single man, a rapist and felon, and his whims. 

Deeply fucked people do that, and, goddamnit, we tried outrage. We tried to point out the stripping of rights, the violence from white nationalists, the alliance with Nazis, the desire to dismantle democracy. We shouted that shit from the rooftops, and that's exactly the reaction all those idiotic fucknuts wanted. When you express pain to a bunch of sadists, they get off, laughing at you for giving them the gleeful orgasms that they wanted by baiting you into your rage. 

Apparently, though, they don't have a shame fetish. All it took was Minnesota Governor Tim Walz echoing a sentiment that's been out there, saying, "These guys are just weird" on MSNBC last Tuesday, and adding later in the day, "These are weird people on the other side. They want to take books away; they want to be in your exam room." It was like light bulbs went off all over and "weird" went viral because, goddamn, it's perfect. And they can't fucking handle it.

It implies "creepy" as well as strange and fucked up, and if demanding to examine the genitals of children to check their sex for playing sports in middle school is anything, it's strange and creepy and fucked up. So is listing innocuous words that people are not allowed to use. So is denying history and science that is plainly factual and threatening to jail librarians as sex offenders if anyone under 18 can get their hands on a book that mentions that gay people exist. So is your Bible fetish, forcing classrooms to display the Ten Commandments and forcing teachers to teach biblical lessons in public school classes. So is any politician declaring that childless people are "sociopaths" and women who don't have children are miserable. So is a presidential candidate talking about Hannibal Lecter and water pressure and bird-killing windmills and how the women who said he raped and groped them aren't attractive enough for him. So is declaring that an election was "rigged" when every single court and every single expert says it wasn't. It's all, all, all so fucked, so creepy, so wrong, so weird. And I haven't even gotten into the shit their voters do. Take off your red cap, Jesse. You look like a dickhead.

Kamala Harris is just a little older than me, and I'm sure that, as someone watching Democrats back down time and again from Republican attacks, she wished for the gloves to come off. Like me, she watched as the idea of going high when they go low failed to meet the moment, with Democrats trying to stick to some kind of unwritten rules of behavior. I mean, I wrote about this shit starting in 2003, about how Democrats need to be willing to stop depending on norms and traditions and fuck all that only rarely works and only at moments of great crisis, like in 2008 or in 2020. What about times like now, when there really is no great crisis in the United States other than the chaos that Trump and MAGA pukes bring about? Yeah, it's time to get in the gutter and bring the fight to them, but on our terms.

So we get the Harris campaign machine, which is an amped up version of the Biden machine, shifting into mocking mode with social media posts immediately reacting to Trump's insanity in speeches and interviews with "This is weird" and that have headlines like "JD Vance Is a Creep (Who Wants to Ban Abortion Nationwide)." They also post ludicrous things from Fox "news" and from the candidates, like a deleted part of JD Vance's campaign website about his being "100% pro-life." They're not afraid to get juvenile, with a post that says, "JD Vance does not couch his hatred for women." 

A joke about Vance fucking couches? Saying he has "hatred for women"? That's going way further than even Hillary Clinton did when she posted, for instance, "A running list of all the worst things Donald Trump has said about women. It’s long." She called Trump "unqualified and temperamentally unfit," which wasn't cruel enough. It was what was expected from Democrats: harsh, sure, but dignified. But saying he's "weird"? No one likes to be called that unless it's meant in an endearing way, like "eccentric." And plenty of men have egos that are so fragile that a woman calling them "weird" or "creepy" makes them collapse into a ball of incel self-loathing.

This whole campaign just feels different now. It's filled with life not just because Harris is younger and more energetic than Biden (although, at 60, she would still be older than most of the leaders in Europe). It's because I don't think the corporate media and many older Democratic leaders understand the vibe shift or the change in the zeitgeist, if you wanna be fancy. 

I'll go with it being a paradigm shift. See, I don't think that those people I mentioned up there get that the old shit is done and the old ways of responding to Republican attacks have to be shitcanned. Lemme put this in Gen X musical terms. Remember how shitty hair metal was so popular and then Nirvana came along and destroyed the whole genre? All the shit that we have put up with for so long doesn't apply right now because Harris has done what Biden could not. With Biden running, we just wanted to get him in office and keep things going as they are. Harris offers something different.

The Harris nomination and campaign and movement (which is really what it's become) offers hope, yes, in the Obama sense of making life better for more people. But because she's taking the fight right to MAGA's dumb faces, she is offering hope that Trump and MAGA can be crushed out of existence. The "weird" attack has punctured the rhetorical dome they were living under. They are hurt and confused, like baboons with shit to hurl but no idea how to hurl it in the right direction. And taking down JD Vance, who was the billionaire class's choice to make Trumpism outlast Trump, is a strategy that cuts off a future. 

And what does Harris offer in these months before the election? Not just a sense of purpose, but a sense of joy, as seen in her rallies where the jubilation between people of all ages is palpable. Megan Thee Stallion? Charli XCX? Beyonce'? Sign us all the fuck up. And it's not just a call to duty, but a call to enjoy it while you're doing it because you know that the people who have fucked with you for the last nine years are shitting themselves in fear. What I love is the feeling that, unlike Biden and Obama before him, she won't forgive and forget and demand we move forward without accountability for those who dragged us backward. God, I hope that's true.

Yeah, the weirdos are gonna get a whole lot weirder before this is over. But maybe now that we're making them play our game, we can make the rules.