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.
