On the party of joy - Christian Lorentzen in LRB:

“With an extra night to myself before the convention, I returned to the literature of Kamala Harris. Her memoir, The Truths We Hold (2019) – an awkward title, the salience of the line from the Declaration of Independence being that the truths are self-evident, not the holding of them – is a campaign book, written in collaboration with a pair of Washington speechwriters, Vinca LaFleur and Dylan Loewe (‘You made this process a joy,’ Harris tells them in the acknowledgments). It makes for dreary reading (‘This is where I learned that “faith” is a verb,’ Harris writes about attending church as a child and hearing Christ’s injunctions to help the poor.”

(…)

“The Democrats have learned the lessons of 2016: no more will Donald Trump’s supporters be tarred as racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise ‘deplorable’. Instead, the opponents were Trump ‘and his allies’ or Trump and his ‘billionaire allies’, who are ‘weird’, selfish, narcissistic, tortured by their own inadequacies, ‘lapdogs for the billionaire class who only serve themselves’.”

(…)

“Trump’s ideological destruction of the bond between the conservative movement and the Republican Party – previously united under the tripartite imperatives of free enterprise, Christianity and a strong military – and his transformation of the GOP into a personality cult with an atmosphere of white grievance and nativism have allowed the Democrats to open their tent to all-comers, from neocons to the self-proclaimed socialist left. It is now the party of labour and of capital; the party of debtors and of bankers; the party that mocks the Ivy League but is largely run by Ivy Leaguers; the party of anti-monopolists and of Silicon Valley; the party for immigrants and for border security; the party of insiders and of the marginalised; the party of the football team and of the sorority; the party of family and of freedom; the party of ceasefires and of the war machine; the party that opposes fascism but abets a genocide. In Chicago, we were constantly reminded that it was the party of joy, whatever that means.”

(…)

“The convention was an exercise in celebrity creation. Harris has been on the national stage for years but in a subordinate role, dispatched most often to speak to the liberal choir on friendly talk shows and at rallies for reproductive rights. She hasn’t figured as an object of hate for the right-wing media on the scale of Ocasio-Cortez, let alone Hillary Clinton.”

(…)

“Michelle Obama was the convention’s most effective anti-Trump speaker: See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hard-working, highly educated, successful people who happen to be black. I want to know – I want to know – who’s going to tell him, who’s going to tell him, that the job he is currently seeking might just be one of those black jobs?”

(…)

“Tim Walz, the high school football coach turned Minnesota governor, brought onto the ticket for his earnest populist touch and his potential to reach white guys who like sports, told the story of his own family’s experience of the ‘hell of infertility’. I was disappointed he didn’t cast it as a football metaphor, something about the Republicans declaring a touchdown gained by IVF in the fourth quarter a penalty and sending families back twenty yards to kick the field goal of adoption. (He did use some of those metaphors in a closing exhortation to the crowd to donate to the campaign and get out the vote.)”

(…)

“I will be surprised if Trump and Vance defeat Harris and Walz in November. The Democratic Party is the most powerful force in American society. It has won the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections, and the nation’s organised money and institutions are behind it. A real sea-change will occur when it faces significant resistance from someone other than a gang of rich scumbags and the folks they manage to con.”

Read the article here.

The party of joy is a very inclusive tent. So much is clear. Even though I’m not convinced that the party is the most powerful force in the US.

Gaza and foreign policy in general are afterthoughts.

Resistance? I would not bet on the revolution, neither would I hope for it.

But the irony of Lorentzen is definitely hopeful. Picked to seduce white guys who like sports.

Kant already said that it’s hard to improve mankind, but the laws to which we obey can be improved. Alas, obedience. In freedom of course.