Last week, I wrote a column contrasting the rhetoric of “joy” that Kamala Harris’ campaign started out trying to embrace with studies that show — or at least suggest — that conservatives experience more joy and happiness than liberals. Yet for weeks, the campaign tried to cultivate an image of giddy excitement with Harris’ softball interviews and passing Tim Walz as some sort of sitcom dad.
More recently, the joy mask has come off, and we’re starting to see a different side to Harris. It’s an ugly side.
Look at her interview with Bret Baier. She responded to Baier’s tough but fair questions with testiness and repeatedly turned every question into an attempt to attack Donald Trump. She came across as petulant and defensive — completely lacking joy.
Related: Who's Got the Joy? You Might Be Surprised.
Harris has also grown increasingly agitated in her attacks on Trump. At one recent speech, she relied on the tried-and-true Hillary Clinton tactic of shrieking about her opponent, again striking an unpresidential tone.
Witness her treatment of a couple of college students who yelled, “Jesus is Lord” at a recent rally. She told the “hecklers” that they were at the wrong rally as the crowd enthusiastically egged her on for mocking them. The Kamala HQ X account even spiked the football and treated her nasty reply to the Christians as a mic-drop moment.
It was a mean-spirited and classless moment that neither reflected joy nor the deep Christian faith Harris’ backers claim she exhibits. It also made her subsequent scripture-quoting appearance at Atlanta’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church look hollow.
Where is this turn coming from? It’s easy to blame the momentum shift toward Donald Trump or chalk it up to the reality that Harris has nothing else to run on other than not being Trump. The editorial board of TIPPInsights suggests that Harris may be acting on the advice of her staff:
Maybe they said to her that in the waning moments of this campaign, she has to double down on expressing her rage against the 45th President, repeating that he is unfit for office to solidify the anti-Trump vote. Or perhaps they advised her that showing emotion in this manner would depict her as a stern leader able to take on any challenge in the Oval Office. Or maybe they thought this was a Hail Mary pass because, with a 69% wrong-track metric haunting her wherever she goes, she has nothing to lose.
Contrast Harris with Trump and JD Vance on the campaign trail. At a recent rally, a woman shouted, “Jesus is King” while Vance was speaking. His reply: “That’s right. Jesus is King.”
Don’t forget the fry heard around the world: Trump’s short stint at McDonald’s. It was a fun moment that showed Trump’s deft touch with the common people.
“Trump looks like he is having fun on the campaign trail,” Erick Erickson wrote on Monday. “Harris looks like she is not enjoying the joy. That tells me a great deal.”
It’s definitely telling. Joy isn’t something that you can manufacture. The Harris-Walz team thought it could conjure up joy and fell way short.