POLITICS
The ‘Thing With Feathers’ Makes A Comeback
With Trump’s subversive plan to deny vote certification in swing states, Kamala Harris will need more than hope to win in November
When Emily Dickinson described hope as the thing with feathers, she could not have known how important that word would become to American politics in the 21st century.
As its standard bearer in 2008, Barack Obama carried hope all the way to the Oval Office. But when he left the White House in 2016, hope was no longer operative. Backlash was.
Obama’s successor Donald Trump began his presidency with a vision of American carnage. His inaugural address conjured an image of despair: inner cities afflicted with crime, factories rusted like tombstones, a political elite blind to the needs of ordinary people, European allies that did not pay their way.
These ills could only be cured, Trump said, if America abandoned its global commitments and looked to itself first. Mother Nature seemed to comply with this cheerless vision. Or perhaps what happened next was merely her comment on the new president’s departure from uplifting, unifying inaugural norms. It rained.
