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.
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.”
In contrast to Roosevelt, Harris and Walz, former President Donald Trump sends Americans a message of anger, gloom, doom and hopelessness.
Trump uses his speeches, interviews, ads and social media posts to spread toxic fear, hatred and division — insulting and demeaning fellow Americans...
It’s as if Trump is saying we have everything to fear.
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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.
