KAMALA HARRIS' MILWAUKEE DEBUT: "WE'RE NOT GOING BACK!"

This is from Anand Giridharadas’ Substack “The Ink”:

I’m on an airplane as I write this. And one measure of the excitement in the country is that, as Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at her first rally since the dramatic events of recent days, virtually every in-seat television screen I could see was set to a live feed of her in Wisconsin.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ debut rally was outstanding, drawing on so many lessons of persuasion that others neglect.

She very pointedly took the fight to Trump at the beginning, carving the contrast narrative of a prosecutor versus a felon, a fighter for justice versus a perpetrator of injustice. But then she pivoted and made clear that beating Trump isn't enough. Nor is saving democracy.

It's about, she said, the ability to fight for you, for your family. This is what the Harvard scholar Daniel Ziblatt calls the "bank shot" to save democracy: we have to save democracy and defeat a fascist, but not only for its own sake, but also to have the tools to make your life better tangibly.

When it came to talking about policy, she kind of didn't! Which is terrific! As Anat Shenker-Osorio, the messaging guru, says, sell the brownie, not the recipe. Policy is a recipe. She spoke instead of the human end states of policy. Having childcare, being able to live and thrive and rise. Brownies are yum.

Harris also did a great job of framing the two visions as forward versus backward, past versus future, but then, again, she made it about us. You have the choice between going forward and backward. You decide what kind of place we are. Simple, sharp, clear, empowering of us.

On a more superficial but no less important level, she was having fun up there. She would rather be up there than anywhere else. Too often, movements for progress don't embody the joy they promise to usher in with policy. She is showing that freedom is more fun than tyranny.

The pro-democracy movement has in recent years somehow allowed the fascists to throw the better party. To be the exuberant, joyous ones. To be energetic. She is reminding us that you can't just appeal to the head; you have to throw a cookout that people want to be at. Period.

We might have seen a catchphrase be born in real time: "We're not going back." Has it all: the "we," the adamant refusal, the calling out of retrograde nostalgia.

So a few core themes become clear: She and Trump are foils who have lived opposite lives. He and his extremist and rich friends aren't focused on your life, but Dems are. There is a choice between taking on the future and going back to the past, and it's ours to make.

It's one speech, and it's early days. But in recent years, a lot of very cutting-edge new thinking in messaging, such as that practiced by Shenker-Osorio, has come to light, and too many Democrats have ignored it. Today's rally marked a break. This is how you speak and win today.

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