Republicans Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are angry. So is independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And so is the beloved socialist curmudgeon Bernie Sanders. Most figures on the American political scene, in fact, currently exhibit various degrees of distemper.
The newly minted national Democratic ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz is the exception. It’s practicing something called “the politics of joy.” Indeed, presidential nominee Harris, she of the impossibly wide, permanently implanted (it seems) smile and sometime manic laugh, and her veep choice, Walz, possessor of a Cheshire cat grin that won’t quit, appear poised to chortle and guffaw their way to the White House.
Some of this, we assume, is natural, but there seems to be more to it than that. The country is (rightly) in a somber mood, and the calculation — it frankly appears scripted for effect — suggests an effort to cheer it up for partisan purposes, making the Republicans led by dour Donald seem like old grumps in the process.
This has been done before in different ways, though not as unreservedly in-your-face as the present attempt. FDR never called politics joyful per se, but his 1932 campaign song, “Happy Days Are Here Again,” and upbeat personality said it for him. The real predecessor to Harris-Walz, however, was Hubert Humphrey, whose exuberant presidential campaign of 1968 was literally christened “the politics of joy.”
Others (JFK, Adlai Stevenson) used wit and humor to establish an environment of hope and optimism, but that’s a somewhat different breed of cat. So-called “joyful” politics has to be doled out carefully; it can be overdone and slop into being maudlin. And joy can be an explosive commodity, if voters don’t feel disposed to be joyful. It’s worse when the joy is unaccompanied (as is the case so far) by concrete, convincing proposals for change and improvement. The Humphrey campaign, it should be remembered, ended badly.
If there’s one candidate this year who’s had a right to look askance at the proponents of joy, it’s independent presidential aspirant RFK Jr., portrayed recently in The New Yorker (8/12/24) as not a happy camper on the trail. Kennedy, whose campaign started out with considerable promise a year ago, has lately run into trouble. His poll numbers, which surged into the 15% to 20% range in 2023 and early 2024, an expression of the potential “double-hater” vote (anti-Trump and anti-Biden), fell off in the wake of the Harris phenomenon, with many previously disheartened Democrats returning home. When he suspended active campaigning on Aug. 23, RFK was polling under 10%.
That could easily change once again. The superficial sheen will inevitably come off the Harris bandwagon under increased scrutiny, and the underlying unhappiness with the American political system will reassert itself. Kennedy’s real problem was and is that the system is presently rigged against anyone not possessing a major-party label, and it has been for some time.
The rigged process, aimed at any independent or third-party candidate daring to contest the agreed-upon Republican-Democratic dual monopoly, whether Ralph Nader in 2000, Jill Stein in 2016, or Kennedy and others this year, takes two insidious forms — (1) prevention of ballot access and (2) banishment from the pre-election debates by which participants achieve legitimacy in the public mind. No other advanced democracy in the developed world permits anything comparable.
Ballot restriction, the major impediment to independents, has added force this year. The Democratic National Committee, running scared as usual (it doesn’t trust its own voters), has formed a team of lawyers charged with keeping outsiders off the ballot in crucial battleground states. A cadre of legal eagles have mounted an aggressive state-by-state monitoring offensive, mainly against Kennedy, but also against Green candidate Stein, to ensure challengers legally cross all the T’s and dot all the I’s in collecting required ballot-petition signatures (usually thousands) within established time deadlines.
As of late August, RFK Jr. was expected to be on the presidential ballot in at least 22 states, much of this the work of former liberal Congressman (and populist presidential candidate) Dennis Kucinich, Kennedy’s campaign manager during his exploratory run in the Democratic primaries. That’s enough access to be a spoiler, but as usual not enough to win in the Electoral College. (This prompted Kennedy’s decision to withdraw his name from the ballot in tightly contested battleground states and endorse Donald Trump to frustrate his Democratic antagonists.)
Then, there’s the deliberate exclusion of third-party aspirants, (chiefly aimed at Kennedy) from televised pre-election debates. That was conveniently arranged for the June 27 Trump-Biden confrontation by a cooperative CNN, which set arbitrary requirements RFK Jr. couldn’t meet in time: 15% in four “approved” national polls (he satisfied three) and a ballot line in enough states to theoretically win 270 Electoral College votes, the threshold for election.
Both major parties have been hyperactive in this reprehensible effort to short-circuit democracy, but Democrats especially so. That’s undoubtedly because RFK Jr’s ideology, while an idiosyncratic liberal-conservative mix, contains elements with special appeal to Democratic voters, whose contemporary leaders, Kennedy maintains, have made theirs the party of “Big Tech, Big Pharma and Wall Street.”
There’s something to the charge. Under self-proclaimed “capitalist” Joe Biden, the Democratic Party has become a comfortable way station for many Fortune 500 CEOs (an estimated 30%), who despite some misgivings plan to support the Democratic ticket in 2024. Kennedy, in particular, makes them uncomfortable with his Sanders-style anti-corporate, economically populist rhetoric.
RFK Jr. is focused, it appears, on a fundamental structural reform of what he perceives as a “corrupt” corporate-statist (or corporatist) economy. Trump, by contrast, would do little economically except tweak trade policy and lower corporate taxes; Harris, following the Biden game plan, would throw money at social problems and micromanage regulation. Both would rather fight the culture wars.
Some idea of Kennedy’s priorities can be seen in his specific proposals: e.g. enacting the Green New Deal, ending lobbying by former government officials, banning TV advertisements by drug companies, passing a public option on healthcare, forgiving student debt, raising taxes on corporations, and doubling the federal minimum wage.
On the negative side, Kennedy supports Israel’s disastrous Gaza incursion, opposes both military assistance to Ukraine and an American assault-weapons ban, tolerates the cryptocurrency mania, and (his Achilles heel) continues his bizarre vendetta against vaccine mandates.
RFK Jr. has obviously been a flawed candidate, but, then, this is a year of flawed candidates.
Wayne O’Leary is a writer in Orono, Maine, specializing in political economy. He holds a doctorate in American history and is the author of two prizewinning books.
From The Progressive Populist, October 1, 2024
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