... and to that comment, there is this OpEd ...
... American culture changes with astonishing speed. Nearly every decade, there are shifts in values, fashions and norms " in the whole atmosphere of national life. Sometimes when you're watching a presidential campaign, it is best to ask: What year is it? What values and moods are dominant in America right now? Which candidate just seems right for this moment, and which candidate is simply out of step with the zeitgeist?
Right now, I'd say, Kamala Harris is benefiting from the beginning of a cultural shift and is beginning to have the cultural winds at her back. Donald Trump is beginning to be slapped in the face by those winds.
Trump emerged in the 1970s and 1980s. It was the tail end of the culture of narcissism, or what Tom Wolfe called the Me Decade. It was the era of the unchained self " self-esteem, self-expression, self-promotion. In the '80s, especially in Manhattan, there was an unabashed fascination with wealth, self-display, ego, the lifestyles of the rich and famous.
Trump was the cartoon epitome of all that decade's extravagances. The Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue opened to the public on Feb. 14, 1983, with all its gild and glitz. His book "The Art of the Deal" came out in 1987, with its braying and panting over money, money, money. In that cultural moment, gold-plated narcissism made Trump a celebrity. ...
Trump was perfect for this moment. Disdained and scorned by the Manhattan elite, he'd built up a lifetime of anti-establishment resentments that dovetailed with the working class's pervasive contempt. He began a hostile takeover of the Republican Party and then the federal government. The key word in that sentence is "hostile." Hostility was in vogue, on the left and the right.
Then, in 2018, the group More in Common released a survey of the American electorate in which it popularized the phrase "the exhausted majority." Many people were tired of the bitterness, the endless Trumpian and culture war psychodrama. There was an intense desire to leave all that behind. In a relatively tight election, Joe Biden rode to victory promising decency and normalcy. ...
Harris enjoyed a surge in the polls as she became the nominee, in part because she projected a new emotional tone -- the politics of joy, as Democrats kept saying during their convention. During Tuesday's debate she converted that emotional shift into a campaigning and governing style.
During the debate, I thought Harris did a poor job of laying out her vision for the next four years. But she did a brilliant job rebutting the cultural values embodied by Trump.
For example, no debate opponent before Harris has known how to handle Trump's narcissism. Harris seemed to understand that narcissism is fundamentally fragile. She poked it. She pricked it. She induced Trump to lash out feebly " with his talk about crowd sizes and how much world leaders like Vladimir Putin allegedly respect him.
She scorned the moral inversion that Trump represents. ...
[emphasis mine]
