2024-08-30 19:12:33
From the moment it became clear that Vice President Kamala Harris would run for the Democrats in the November presidential election instead of the current head of the White House, Joe Biden, her rival Donald Trump began to attack her. And he was the first to take aim at her laugh. “Did you hear him? She’s crazy!” he shouted in front of his enthusiastic supporters.
Similarly, other Republicans tried to get into politics. But Harris’ laughter is considered by many of her supporters to be disarming, and instead of reacting to Trump’s attacks, the candidate emphasizes why laughter is important to her.
“I can’t laugh like a shy girl, lol,” she described on the Drew Barrymore show at the beginning of the summer. “I have my mother’s laugh and I grew up among women who laughed. They really laughed, with all their heart. They sat around the table, drank coffee, told big stories and laughed out loud,” the politician described why she refuses to be ashamed of her laughter.
Harris can thus laugh at herself during the campaign. Even the vice president’s husband, Doug Emhoff, commented on her laugh at the party convention in his speech, when he said that it was one of the reasons why he fell in love with her. He received rapturous applause from the audience.
According to experts, Harris can, on the contrary, make fun of her opponent with a light sense of humor, without appearing aggressive and attacking like him.
For example, she said that as a prosecutor she dealt with criminals of all kinds: “Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Fraudsters who broke the rules for their own gain. So listen to me when I say that I know the type of Donald Trump .”
According to humor researcher Eva Ullmann, Harris and her co-candidate Tim Walz, who in this respect acts like a vice president, can score points with this tactic, Deutsche Welle writes.
“The election campaign in the US is not only about humor. The Harris-Walz duo has a clear political line, they can assert themselves and have a high status. They are not comedians, they do not want to compete as such, but there is something very heartfelt and down-to-earth about their humor, something attractive – and that is very disarming,” says Ullmann.
Joy and optimism became the main theme of the new democratic campaign. According to Ullmann, Harris and Walz have a big advantage over Trump in that they are “not nearly as disrespectful.” “But this is exactly what Trump and his entourage have apparently taken revenge on, because society is saying: ‘No, we can’t take this anymore. We’ve had enough of this eternal belittling, denigration and hatred, we don’t want this form of humor anymore,'” the researcher describes.
Anything is better than Biden
Since the beginning of the campaign, Kamala Harris has also been accompanied by jokes and memes on social networks, which are mainly spread by young voters of the Democratic Party. Behind the optimism that now accompanies the Democrats’ presidential campaign is a huge relief that President Joe Biden is no longer the candidate. The president withdrew from the election last month after growing pressure from his party and the public regarding his advanced age.
“When you hit one hand with a hammer, the other hand feels great,” Columbia University political science professor Donald Green told the New York Times.
“I think there was a growing sense of hopelessness that Democrats felt,” he says of the reaction to Biden’s deteriorating public image. Especially young people were not affected by his campaign at all, and on the contrary, they kept moving away from the candidate, Green believes.
According to him, Harris is also helped by the fact that she exceeded all expectations. As vice president, she was neither prominent nor popular, quite the opposite. However, as a presidential candidate, according to him, she is very organized, she is full everywhere and her support is growing.
Republican reaction
But Republicans are nervous about the optimism that accompanies the Democratic campaign. Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, said that you can’t win an election with joy, and even criticized his rivals for smiling too much.
“Most people in our country can be happy sometimes,” Vance said. “Sometimes they can rejoice, but then they turn on the news and realize that what is happening in this country is a disgrace.”
However, positive mood can work on voters, experts agree. They often make subliminal decisions based on simple ideas rather than specific policies the candidates are promoting, adds John Geer, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University.
Laughter is also a specific form of communication, psychologist Michael Titze tells Deutsche Welle. She explains that when someone like Harris laughs out loud, the brain releases feel-good neurotransmitters. According to him, it is not for nothing that they say that laughter is the best medicine. Cheerful people are attractive, he adds.
Video: Kamala Harris Says I Will Do Everything I Can To Unite Democratic Party (7/23/2024)
“I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party,” said Kamala Harris | Video: Reuters