Harris and Walz seize on joyful message in contrast to darker Trump themes

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is joyous about the joy.

“All the things that make me mad about those other guys and all the things they do wrong, the one thing I will not forgive them for is they tried to steal the joy from this country. They try and steal the joy,” Walz, the Democrats’ new vice-presidential candidate, said at a boisterous Detroit Metro Airport rally Wednesday for his new running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris. “But you know what? You know what? Our next president brings the joy! She emanates the joy!”

Ever since President Joe Biden stepped aside as the Democratic presidential nominee a little more than two weeks ago, the heady combination of Democratic relief and genuine enthusiasm for his replacement has transformed the Democratic ticket — a metamorphosis turbocharged by Tuesday’s addition of Walz as Harris’s No. 2.

Now, a stark split-screen of two very different campaigns has come into focus.

Former president Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, are offering a dark and dystopian vision of Democratic rule, running an operation laden with name-calling and trolling and rife with grievance. Their calculation is that the country believes things are way off track and that their darker message will resonate with how voters see reality.

Harris and Walz, meanwhile, are offering a sunnier vision and tone — and seem to be having a heckuva good time doing so. Gone are Biden’s sober exhortations about the battle for the soul of the nation and a democracy under attack; in its place are promises of “freedom” and “a brighter future” and, at times, audible giggles and laughter.

“My promise to you is this: Our campaign will reach out to everyone from red states to blue states, from the heartland to the coasts, in rural, urban, suburban and tribal communities,” Harris told a crowd in Philadelphia on Tuesday, seeming to channel the 2004 Democratic convention speech that catapulted former president Barack Obama into the national spotlight. “We are running a campaign on behalf of all Americans. And when elected, we will govern on behalf of all Americans.”

Even when attacking Trump — and responding to attacks by him — Harris and Walz seem to be having fun.

Comparing the résumé of Walz, a former high school social studies teacher and football coach, with that of Vance, Harris reached for a gridiron analogy in Philadelphia: “Some might say it’s like a matchup between the varsity team and the JV squad,” she said, as Walz steepled his fingers out toward the crowd and chuckled just behind her.

When parrying Trump’s attacks, Harris has toggled between almost dismissive boredom and defiant amusement — a sort of can-you-believe-this-guy brushback seemingly designed to irk the former president.

After Trump criticized Harris — who is Black and Indian American — during an interview last week with the National Association of Black Journalists, saying “she was always of Indian heritage” and only recently “happened to turn Black,” Harris barely acknowledged the slight.

“It was the same old show — the divisiveness and the disrespect,” she told a Houston crowd later that day, adding: “The American people deserve better.”

A day earlier, at a rally in Atlanta, Harris seemed to relish teasing Trump, noting, “So he won’t debate, but he and his running mate sure seem to have a lot to say about me.

“Well, Donald,” she continued, “I do hope you’ll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage, because as the saying goes: ‘If you’ve got something to say, say it to my face.’”

Among Democratic voters, the enthusiasm is palpable. Tammy Hanley, 53, a special-education teacher from Anchorage, was visiting family in Minnesota and changed her return flight to be able to attend Harris’s Wednesday rally in Eau Claire, Wis.

“I’m going to cry when I see her,” Hanley said. “I feel so much more hopeful about the future. Everyone is feeling more hopeful.

Hanley laughed as she likened the Democratic and Republican tickets to “unicorn sparkles versus puke.” As she finished eating a doughnut that volunteers were handing out to attendees entering the Harris-Walz rally, Hanley added that the Republican side felt chock full of “the-world-is-doomed rallies,” whereas the Democrats were now offering “doughnut rallies.”

Caitlin Legacki, a Democratic strategist, said “the overall vibes right now should not be ignored,” arguing that the Harris-Walz “enthusiasm makes people want to join in.”

“If you’re choosing between two parties, and you can go to the one where this guy is yelling at you about politics or you can go to the one where people are having a good time, you’re always going to choose the one that’s more fun,” Legacki said. “After the last 10 years of American politics, people are just exhausted. They’re tired of being angry. And so giving people something to be excited about, telling them there’s a role for you in this space, is hugely important right now.”

The Trump campaign, for its part, began Wednesday morning with a fundraising email titled, “The world has gone to s*** in the last 2 weeks!” Inside, the missive warned that “the stock market is CRASHING! Unemployment is RISING! Wars in the Middle East are spiraling OUT OF CONTROL!” — and all the while “Kamala is asleep at the switch.”

And on Tuesday, as Harris and Walz were making their first exuberant joint appearance, Trump took to TruthSocial, unleashing angry screeds, including one that posted shortly after midnight. In his messages, Trump disparaged ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos as “Liddle’ George” and “George Slopadopolus”; dismissed Harris — whom he called “Crazy Kamabla” — and Walz as “the most RADICAL Left duo in American history”; and claimed, with no evidence, that “Crooked Joe Biden, the WORST president in the history of the U.S.,” was going to crash the Democratic convention and take back the nomination from Harris, which Trump claimed was “Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him by Kamabla” in a “COUP.”

Trump and his aides have closely tracked right-track, wrong-track polling about how voters feel about the direction of the country, and they believe that many people are not optimistic about the way things are heading. One adviser in Trump’s orbit said fundraising numbers go up with more negative messages. “When you’re under siege, you’re raising the most money,” said the adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal data.

Asked about Trump’s dark rhetoric and angry rallies, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt argued in a statement that only Trump “has a proven record of success” and proceeded to criticize the Democratic ticket.

“If Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are given four years to implement their radical liberal policies, America will spiral into a socialist, open border, crime-ridden hellhole that resembles Kamala’s hometown of San Francisco or the streets of Walz’s Minneapolis in the summer of 2020,” Leavitt wrote. “On the contrary, President Trump and Senator Vance have detailed policy plans to end Kamala’s invasion of illegal immigrants and brutal migrant crimes, bring down inflation and end the wars around the world that began because of the weak Harris-Biden foreign policy agenda.”

At his most recent public campaign event, a Saturday rally in Atlanta, Trump painted a dystopian portrait. He described crimes being committed in Atlanta, violent riots in American cities, immigrants killing Americans and a range of other societal ills. He blamed Democrats and, at times, even Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a fellow Republican.

“We are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation. We are a nation that has lost its confidence, lost its willpower and lost its strength,” the former president said near the end of his speech.

The doom-and-gloom strategy, however, is a potentially risky one.

Stephanie Grisham — a former Trump press secretary who has since become a sharp Trump critic — said using fear has always appealed to the former president, in part because it riles up and motivates his far-right base. But she said the appeal is starting to becoming wearying.

“You can only be hit over the head so much and be told your own country sucks so much before you get fatigued by it,” Grisham said. “I think people yearn for a message of hope. Now that I’ve taken a step back and watch it more as a citizen, it’s just sad and depressing to watch.”

Brendan Buck, a former aide to former GOP House speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, agreed.

“I think there are a lot of people who are yearning for something exciting and something fun, something we have not had since the Obama era,” he said. “There is something appealing that you want to be a part of when people are having fun.”

But Buck said that the Harris campaign will be tested to see if it can continue to radiate joy when things take a challenging turn, and that they need to be careful to make sure the joy seems “for everyone, and not just the elites.”

On Wednesday in Detroit, a Fox News reporter specifically addressed the issue of negativity with Vance, saying that he can look “a little too serious, too angry sometimes” and asked, “What makes you smile? What makes you happy?”

“I smile at a lot of things, including bogus questions from the media, man,” Vance said, forcing a chuckle. “If you watch a full speech I that give, I’m actually — I’m having a good time out here and I’m enjoying this.”

He continued: “Sometimes you’ve got to take the good with the bad. And right now, I’m angry about what Kamala Harris has done to this country and done to the American southern border. And I think most people in our country, they can be happy-go-lucky sometimes, they can enjoy things sometimes, and they can turn on the news and recognize that what’s going on in this country is a disgrace.”

Meryl Kornfield in Philadelphia, Marianne LeVine in Washington and Sabrina Rodriguez in Eau Claire, Wis., contributed to this report.