The Dark Tower’s foundations are cracking
A friend registered voters with HeadCount Thursday night at a Cake concert. He called yesterday to report he’d not seen this mood among volunteers and concertgoers since 2008. He had the names of a couple of eager, new volunteers to pass along. One woman, especially, could be a star.
Anand Giridharadas comments this morning on the phenomenon. With the joy-filled Harris-Walz campaign taking off like a rocket and the Trump campaign sinking like the Titanic, there are elements of both hope and relief going unnoticed.
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota embodies the dads and uncles who might have gone the way of loved ones lost to Fox News and right-wing propaganda but did not. In Walz, we see “an older white guy who is just happy and can’t wait for the future.” Mourning in America has turned into morning in America (emphasis mine):
It’s going to make people feel rage at what was stolen from them. And it’s going to show them, not tell them but show, what might yet be possible. There are years that could still be reclaimed.
Yes, the Trump tax cuts were bad. The immigration policy a catastrophe. The Covid policy a calamity. But this — this is unfathomable in scale. Millions of our people were turned into grist for the Murdoch mill, and broken, and from the shards of them a movement was made.
It’s one of these phenomena that underlie politics but isn’t often discussed when discussing politics. But trust me: people feel as strongly about this as about monetary policy or tax cuts. Their kinfolk were stolen by billionaires. Their minds, their hearts, their loving selves.
Dads who lovingly braided their daughters’ hair and practiced spelling bee words with them now malign their freedoms and the people they love and the families they have made. They were stolen. People want their families back. And this is going to become a theme of this campaign.
“Harris is winning the all-important battle — of vibes,” reads the headline on Fareed Zakaria Washington Post column this morning, placing EQ ahead of IQ:
This is a turning of the tables. Donald Trump and the Republicans have tended to be masters of the politics of emotion, emphasizing strength and evoking fear. But for now, Harris’s hopefulness — the sense of “joy” that Walz speaks of on the campaign trail — appears to be dominating.
From there, Zakaria gives a standard IQ analysis of the state of play.
But Giridharadas is onto something, something my friend saw on the ground. It is premature — and overstating things — but it almost feels as if Gollum and the One Ring have tumbled into the fires of Mt. Doom. An earthquake is shaking the foundations of the Dark Tower.
‘Stand, Men of the West! Stand and wait! This is the hour of doom.””
We are not there yet. The rotund opera star hasn’t sung and there is work ahead. But it’s time for the choir to sing, Walz told the Phoenix rally Friday night.
No message, no matter how well crafted and tested, Anat Shenker-Osorio advises, is any good if the choir (that’s you) won’t sing it. “This is my love language,” she tweeted when the video below posted. Get to it.
“We are neighbors. We are family. We are each other’s people. Damn the thieves. We must depose them and find each other again. And now we glimpse how,” Giridharadas concludes.
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.