Photo: Mark Peterson/Redux for New York Magazine

One of the most striking themes of the Democratic National Convention was the way the message swung back and forth between stark warnings that democracy is under attack and playful invitations to engage in a politics of joy. Democrats sometimes seemed to be attempting a tricky tightrope act, akin to inviting people to dance their way out of a burning house..

Throughout most of the convention the message seemed to be: Join the fight to save democracy, and let’s have some fun while doing it. It’s a bold strategy that President Biden could never have executed.

Former President Bill Clinton’s speech was a perfect example. “We’ve seen more than one election slip away when we thought it couldn’t happen, when people got distracted by false issues or overconfident. This is a brutal, brutal business,” he told the crowd, before concluding a few minutes later: “We need Kamala Harris, the president of joyto guide us.”

Time and again, joy and happiness were the themes of the cheerful celebrities and upbeat optimists who took to the stage at Chicago’s United Center, including comedians Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Kennan Thompson and Mindy Kahling, poet Amanda Gorman and singers John Legend, Stevie Wonder and Sheila E. But beyond the fun and funny artistic voices were plenty of speakers, like Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who solemnly invoked the January 6 insurrection and the need to act on Donald Trump’s threats to end the Constitution, be a dictator on day one, and pardon convicted January 6 rioters if they’re elected.

“My father never got to vote in his lifetime because of Jim Crow, so I’ve dedicated my career to protecting the vote from violence and discrimination. You can imagine what I felt on January 6th when I saw firsthand how those insurrectionists tried to take that away,” Thompson told the crowd. “They did it to rob millions of Americans of their vote.”

“Trump attempted to destroy our democracy by lying about the election and inciting a violent mob to attack the Capitol,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries said from the podium, before breaking into a preacher-style cadence to cheers: “In the Old Testament Book of Psalms, Scripture tells us that weeping may endure through the long night, but joy will come in the morning.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton quoted the same Bible passage in his remarks. “We’ve been through lies and areas of darkness,” he said. “But if we stick together, black, white, Latina, Asian, Indian-American, if we stick together, joy, joy, joy, joy that comes in the morning.”

And surprise guest Oprah Winfrey saluted the speakers on stage who had shared heartbreaking personal stories of rape, incest and medical trauma caused by restricted access to abortion before she made the turn. “We are not going back. We are not going back, we are not going to be pushed back, we are not going to be bullied back, we are not going back,” she said, before singing the J-word: “So let’s choose. Let’s choose truth, let’s choose honor and let’s choose yoooooooy!”

So what is it? Are Democrats waging a desperate battle against a potential dictator, or are they trying to have a good time? “It’s not a campaign issue,” Quentin Fulks, deputy campaign manager for the Harris-Walz ticket, told Chicago Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet about the j-word. “It’s just something they do, something they bring to the table. I think when you try to manufacture something like joy, it can backfire because it’s fake. I think the reason it resonates with people is because it’s authentic.”

Harris didn’t once utter the word “joy” in her prime-time closing speech. Instead, she listed Trump’s attacks on democracy. “Think not just about the chaos and the disaster when he was in office, but the seriousness of what’s happened since he lost the last election,” Harris said in the stern, persuasive tone of the prosecutor she once was. “Donald Trump tried to throw out your votes. When that failed, he sent an armed mob to the U.S. Capitol, where they attacked police officers. When politicians in his own party pleaded with him to call off the mob and send help, he did the opposite: He added fuel to the fire.”

Harris does not appear to minimize or ignore the reality that America in the age of Trump is flirting with open attacks on democracy. But she should consider embracing the politics of joy, not just because her followers like it, but because expressions of love and happiness have a proven track record of dissolving the dark power of dictatorship.

I recently spoke about the phenomenon with Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian at New York University whose book Strongmen explores how authoritarian strongmen gain power—and lose it. While Trump sits uncomfortably alongside the likes of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, India’s Narendra Modi, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Ben-Ghiat says, many of today’s strongmen are experiencing a wave of popular resistance around the world.

“There’s a huge anti-authoritarian movement happening all over the world, and we’re in the middle of a renaissance of nonviolent protest all over the world. And there are places that have had the biggest protests ever, or in the last 40 years, like Poland, Chile, Israel,” she told me. “You could name 10 other countries that have had the biggest protests ever, because something is changing in the world. And so one of my guiding principles is to always have hope.”

In Turkey, Ben-Ghiat said, the politics of love was the most powerful weapon available to push back against the creeping authoritarianism of that country’s strongman, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. “One of my democratic heroes is Ekrem İmamoğlu,” she said, referring to the mayor of Istanbul. “He ran for office in 2019 on a platform of love. And instead of holding rallies, he walked around hugging people. The complete opposite of Erdoğan. And he won.”

It is possible that the new politics of joy will continue the activism of the recent past – the Women’s March in 2017, the Black Lives Matter demonstrations after the killing of George Floyd in 2020, and this year’s election – as part of a larger movement to strengthen democracy.
“Never give up on the American people. There’s a lot of decency. There’s a lot of people we’re not hearing,” Ben-Ghiat said. “A lot of it is behind the scenes. There are a lot of people working right now to protect our democracy.”