Can Kamala and Tim Transform America?

Is America Poised to Beat Back Fascism?

Elizabeth Frantz

Hi. It’s been a while. How’s everyone?

I hope you’re all well.

It’s been a tumultuous — and transformative — few weeks. If you’re interested in what I’ve had to say about it, come on over to The Issue, my new publication. There, we’ve been discussing it all, in depth — Trump, Biden, Kamala, Tim, America, the future, and how the dots are connected.

Why is Kamala’s approach so devastatingly effective? I think that “joy,” as it’s come to be called, goes straight to America’s soul for a reason. America’s a brutal society. And in Kamala, we see a leader modeling for us a new kind of way of being. She’s saying something like: everyone deserves to be joyous, just as they are, not only if they’re rich, famous, powerful, etcetera. And in the kind of society America’s become, that’s an incredibly powerful statement to make.

Meanwhile in Coach Tim, we see another kind of figure America’s needed. A leader who’s been through the dark night of the soul, and emerged on the other side. What happens when we go through these periods of intense suffering in life? We gain the capacity to love, in more mature and sophisticated ways, and in return, we’re loved, too. Tim has this in spades, and it’s a stark counterpoint to the idea of…