When New York Gov. Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke to the 1932 Democratic National Convention that nominated him as the party’s presidential candidate, he was introduced with the song “Happy Days Are Here Again.”
There was actually little to be happy about in 1932. America was in the grip of the Great Depression, with high unemployment upending the lives of millions of families, leaving many suffering from hunger and homelessness. Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini ruled Italy. Germany was in crisis a year before Adolf Hitler would come to power.
Yet “Happy Days” radiated hope and expectations for better days ahead. Roosevelt adopted it as his campaign theme song and Democrats rallied to it for decades.
Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) haven’t adopted the nearly 100-year-old song as the theme of their campaign to become our next Democratic president and vice president. Yet “Happy Days” captures their message as well as Roosevelt’s.
While problems continue to face our nation, we can overcome them with good policies and leaders. This will enable our government to create a future of freedom, opportunity and prosperity for millions more Americans.
As in the 1930s — when times were far worse than today — many Americans now feel left out, left behind, unrecognized and disrespected. Harris and Walz send them a message of hope, just as President Roosevelt did to Americans of an earlier generation.
Roosevelt expressed America’s optimistic spirit perfectly when he said in his first Inaugural Address that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Those words inspired Americans to rebuild our economy and win World War II.
When he became president in 1933 and had a supportive Congress controlled by Democrats, Roosevelt improved the lives of Americans in need with programs such as Social Security and unemployment insurance and created an activist government that led the recovery from the Depression.
In contrast to Roosevelt, Harris and Walz, former President Donald Trump sends Americans a message of anger, gloom, doom and hopelessness.
Now the Republican presidential nominee for the third time, Trump proposes shrinking government and doing less for the American people. He wants to impose big tariffs on imports that will fuel inflation while cutting taxes for the rich and corporations and limiting our freedoms in many areas.
Trump uses his speeches, interviews, ads and social media posts to spread toxic fear, hatred and division — insulting and demeaning fellow Americans, our courts, our government, our schools, the news media, and the integrity of our elections system. His rambling Aug. 8 news conference was a prime example.
NPR reported that Trump made “at least 162 misstatements, exaggerations and outright lies in 64 minutes” in his remarks. The New York Times reported that Trump made additional false and misleading statements in an interview with Elon Musk on X on Monday night. It’s as if Trump is saying we have everything to fear.
As Daniel A. Cox, a polling expert with the conservative American Enterprise Institute wrote in June, Trump “redefined the GOP in the eyes of many, associating the party with a paranoid vision of American life and a populist contempt for the nation’s political system.”
“In response, Democrats rallied to the defense of America’s greatness, norms, and institutions,” Cox added.
I’ve worked on multiple presidential and other election campaigns for decades. And I have served as a party official, including interim chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.
So, take it from me, what Cox calls a “paranoid vision” usually doesn’t win elections. Optimism usually wins more votes than pessimism. Praising America usually wins more votes than denigrating our country.
Sure, candidates always criticize their opponents, sometimes quite harshly. But I’ve never seen any presidential candidate demonize his or her opponents with personal insults, juvenile nicknames and blatant lies the way Trump did when he ran against Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and now Harris.
Harris offers something better. She appeals for unity, not division, between all Americans. And she does so while radiating warmth, empathy, happiness and great affection for the American people.
“As Tim Walz likes to point out, we are joyful warriors,” Harris said Wednesday.
Harris has worked closely with President Biden to win congressional approval of landmark legislation that has cut health insurance and prescription drug costs for millions of Americans, reduced the impact of climate change, imposed a minimum tax on multibillion-dollar corporations, cracked down on wealthy tax cheats, ended the COVID pandemic with free vaccines and payments to Americans to overcome economic hardships, improved our aging infrastructure, reformed gun safety laws and much more.
Nearly 16 million American jobs have been created under the Biden-Harris administration, while the number of Americans with jobs dropped by 3 million while Trump was president. Trump’s botched response to the COVID-19 pandemic played a big role in the job losses.
Harris will use Beyoncé’s 2016 hit song “Freedom” as part of her 2024 campaign theme. In her first campaign commercial, this song creates a reason for every American to come together to fight for those values that unite us.
Harris sums up her campaign by saying, “In this election, we each face a question: What kind of country do we want to live in?” noting that some “think we should be a country of chaos, of fear, of hate.”
“But us, we choose something different. We choose freedom.”
The freedom to “not just to get by, but get ahead,” “be safe from gun violence,” and “make decisions about your own body.” And “a future where no child lives in poverty, where we can all afford health care, where no one is above the law.”
The bottom line is that while Trump is a prisoner of the past and is consumed by personal grievances over his 2020 election loss and prosecution on numerous criminal charges, Vice President Harris is a pioneer of the future who embraces what lies ahead.
Donna Brazile is a political strategist, a contributor to ABC News and former chair of the Democratic National Committee. She is the author of “Hacks: Inside the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House.”