Is our Democrats learning?
If you haven’t seen the first Kamala Harris ad that dropped Thursday, here ’tis.
Both with the Beyoncé soundtrack and her “fighting for the future” framing, Harris is defining freedom our way while reclaiming it from conservatives who wrap themselves in it while stomping on the freedoms of everyone not in their MAGA tribe.
Claiming freedom, that all-American value, is a move on which Anat Shenker-Osorio has insisted for years. It’s finally sinking in.
Anand Giridharadas’s The Ink observes:
Harris frames the election as the freedom to choose a future — following the advice messaging expert Anat Shenker-Osorio has been talking to us about all year. This isn’t about the narrow notion of freedom that’s gotten currency on the right, the sort of freedom that’s about retreating from public life and obligations, even if it is wrapped in the flag. It’s about coming together to work for a bigger, broader sense of freedom that includes all of us — the idea that the flag actually should stand for.
Harris needs to brand herself before Republicans have a chance to “but her emails” her, so this ad is an important first salvo.
The contrast with Trump and Vance is an important feature here. For Democrats to be the good guys, there must be bad guys. And, brother, are these some bad guys.
Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka on Kamala Harris on July 9: “She’s a DEI hire, right? She’s a woman. She’s colored.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Waltz (D) describes them “weird” and Gorka as “a Bond villain” out of Central Casting.
Trump and #Project2025 plan “to return America to a dark past.” But Gorka demonstrates that they don’t want to take America back to the 1950s. They never left.
Guess what? We’re not going back!
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