What I’m hopeful for

It isn’t what you think it is…..

Kat Vargas, me, Kate Duffy, Liz Minnella

To be honest I’m hopeful for a lot of things right now. But what is bringing me the most delight is

Kamala’s brat summer. It’s fun. It’s joyful. It’s what we all deserve right now.

One of Trump’s super-powers is that he says so much crazy shit, so many unintelligible sentences, so many lies … that it’s hard to pin him down on one. But more than that, it’s his commitment to projecting onto others his own faults such that he is rubber and his opponent is glue.  

He claims fake news even as he’s lying through his teeth. He attacks Biden for not working when he was always out on the golf course. He calls her “crooked Hillary” while telling oil executives for $1 billion dollar donation he’d do whatever they want in the White House. He called Samuel L. Jackson “not athletic.” You know the drill. Maybe it’s Trump’s mob-boss inflected sense of bravado that does it. That makes us forget about what he just said, or look away. But this total lack of stickiness of his attacks and absurdities is a quality that has evaded Democrats for years. 

Until now. Kamala does a lot of stuff that could go cringe or camp. The dancing, the laughing, the actual human joy.  At times the internet can be a nasty place (especially for women). The “did you fall out of a coconut tree?” remark that is going super viral was originally posted by a Republican oppo account. (oppo = oppositional research, the people who post dirt on their opponent.) 

But the Harris campaign has done something that the Biden campaign never could, harness the cultural moment and turn what could be attacks into assets. 

For the past few years I’ve talked so much about the massive conservative messaging infrastructure. They’ve had to invest in it because you have to work to spread their terrible messages.  We’ve had Hollywood and common sense to spread our messages, but there’s always been a disconnect between the cultural currency of the party’s stance on issues and the cultural capabilities of our electeds. Until now. 

On Thursday my friend Liz Minnella (@lizaminnella) hosted a zoom event where white women organized to elect Harris. 150,000 people showed up on the call - a level of excitement unsurpassed for a political event in recent memory. She did it on instagram and organized it over a few short days.  People are actually excited and happy to organize for Kamala and those vibes are actually critical to getting her elected. 

I think people underestimate the power of joy and community in political organizing.  There’s a reason Moms for Liberty calls themselves joyful warriors. But we are building our warrior clan too - and it’s not cringe galas or boomer-filled halls listening to boring lectures.

Also this week my friend Kat Vargas (@HowdyPolitics) got to visit the Vice President’s house with her son.  Only a few years ago, Kat and Liz were suburban moms who had never worked in politics before. Then they started posting about it on Instagram, advocating for gun safety in the halls of the legislature (TX & IL, respectively), and now Liz has raised $11 million dollars and Kat is rubbing shoulders with the future President. 

I can tell you one thing about these ladies, I never heard either of them say, “why me?” They’ve always said, “why not me?” We have three months of campaigning to decide if we are going to protect our freedoms and save democracy.  The only way we build a campaign strong enough to fight the cult of Trump is to invite people in (we need swing and moderate voters) and then our task is to make it fun to be here. 

I’ve asked myself WHY NOT ME. And it took awhile, but I have my answer.

I want to harness this joy. I want it to be contagious. I want all of us to have a way to keep spreading it and motivate people with it.

So watch this space. Something exciting is on the way. I have been developing a brand new way for us to get active and get involved and spread the joy.

Let’s make politics fun again. Kamala certainly is. 

I am going to be launching a project called Ripple that will give you all the tools to have conversations with anyone you know about what's on their ballot and how they can get involved. This election is about all of us.

We need to make having conversations about politics fun, and more importantly - having conversations about how Kamala Harris should be our next president fun.