A long drive down an isolated country road near Newton, Iowa leads to a small pocket of activity by the side of the road, about a dozen cars parked near the only house in sight, surrounded by a vastness of farm land. It’s a small gathering in a private home, about 30-40 rental chairs are closely arranged in a small living room. Mostly seniors are here, some middle-age folks, the only ones I see under 40 are press and staffers — we’re all waiting for Kamala Harris to come meet and greet us. She’s fashionably late. I have time to chat up some of the small crowd.
One lady tells me “Trump embarrasses me every time he talks. Even Nixon, I didn’t like him, but he wasn’t embarrassing.” A middle-aged couple tell me they have lost many friends who are Trump supporters: “We can’t talk with them anymore, it’s very uncomfortable, so we’ve just distanced ourselves. We’ve lost many friends that way.” Someone says: “It’s Fox News,” Everyone immediately agrees in unison. I ask: “But there are tons of other news sources out there, five major TV news outlets, still a ton of print media, do they not even accidentally happen to come across any of these?” Someone answers, and they all agree, “It doesn’t matter, to them, anything other than Fox News is fake news.” One woman adds “It’s like a cult, they all behave like they are hypnotized in a cult.”
What emerges from this small sample of impromptu, unscientific focus group is that these people are not talking about policy or issues, they’re talking like news analysts and pundits. Their focus is beating Trump, that’s their dominant issue. I think to myself how many news analysts and pundits are routinely wrong, and now voters are looking to predict which candidate is most likely to defeat Donald Trump. Maybe that’s why Kamala is slipping in the polls?
Kamala arrives and is introduced to an enthusiastic round of applause. I’m curious to see how she will deliver her For the People stump speech to a small, living-room sized audience.
Half-way through her speech, a different theme seems to emerge. The word “fight” is repeated in various contexts:
— “My mother was a fighter”
— “My mother raised my sister and me to be fighters”
— “I became a prosecutor so I can fight for the vulnerable”
— “I had to fight to become the first woman of color to become Attorney General for the State of California”
— “As Attorney General, I fought the powerful interests.”
The list goes on.
It occurs to me that the Fight theme fits her persona so much better than the For the People slogan. Up close, Kamala comes across as exceptionably bright, energetic and tough as nails. And yet, you sense a genuine undercurrent of humanity with a solid foundation of altruistic values and common decency. Her fight-for-the-working-people rhetoric is not inconsistent with the identity she projects, it rings true.
After the talk, we mingle. I try to think of a question she’s not heard before. I care less about the substance of the answer than how she handles an unusual question. I come up with:
— “Do you think Donald Trump could have been elected 20-30 years ago?”
I was right, she’s surprised by the question.
— “You mean 30 years ago, if he ran then?” She asks, stalling for time while she decides how to respond.
— “Yes”
— “No, he wouldn’t have gotten elected” She’s solidly on track with the question now. No more hesitations.
— “Why?”
“The circumstances were different then, everything was different.” Her assertiveness and seriousness indicates a concern about the issue, as if she’s not happy about what she’s saying, but it is how she feels.
“So, can this country ever go back to circumstances that would prevent a Donald Trump from coming to power?”
“No” she snaps, “those days are gone”
Time for me to diffuse the seriousness; not the right time nor place for that. In a mockingly panicked voice, I say:
“Well, geez, thanks for the optimism!”
She explodes in laughter. A big, bright, lively, visceral laugh. This lady enjoys laughing. A wonderful quality in a personal, one-on-one or small group setting, unfortunately overused in public appearances, in my view.
At the very instant of laughter, a staffer snaps the obligatory photograph. In this case, I am happy and proud to be in this photograph. I genuinely like this woman.
Kamala snaps back into campaign mode, she won’t let my line about optimism go unchallenged:
“Would you rather have optimism or someone who is ready to fight?”
I give the fighter a smile of approval: “Of course!“
