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George Lakeoff, Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, recently wrote:

“Joy is powerful because it plays on your emotions. And your emotions are everything in politics.

“If you feel good about somebody’s political views – if joining with them, voting for them, etc., makes you feel good, makes you feel happy – that’s the most powerful thing there can be in politics. If they identify with something deep inside you, with who you really are most deeply, that’s what this is about.

“This is about politics that identifies with who people are, what they need. You know – what their values are, what their everyday life is like – all of those things. And that’s what Kamala has been able to pull off, which is remarkable. That’s what a political leader really needs.”

What Lakeoff is saying is one of the reasons I think polls don’t tell us much about how the election is going to turn out.

They measure numbers, but they don’t measure people’s emotions. That’s another reason why people voting for Trump makes no sense. It’s emotional, not rational.

Think about it. His voters say he will do better on immigration than Harris when he persuaded Senate Republicans to kill the bill they negotiated with President Biden that would have helped; that they trust him more on national security when he alienated our allies when he was president and made us more unsafe; that he is better at the economy when today’s economy under Biden/Harris is the best in decades.

It’s all about emotions, not reason or logic. Emotions drive voters as much as anything else, Lakeoff is saying, and when a candidate can evoke joy it becomes a powerful force in influencing the way people vote.

Like millions of other Americans, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have made me feel not only good about their campaign, but good about the future of our country. Politics doesn’t feel so heavy right now, so dark, so hopeless.

I didn’t expect that to happen after Joe Biden decided not to run again. If anything, I was worried about how effective a campaigner she would be. I hadn’t seen the natural joy she exudes in her very being, but in a matter of days she had lifted my spirit, and apparently that of most Americans.

As decent and effective as he has been as President, Joe Biden doesn’t exude the kind of joy Kamala does. He is a positive man, and looks for the best in people, but joy is something that is a part of a person’s nature. You either have it or you don’t.

Kamala Harris does, and it is going to help her win the election.

One reason is that there is nothing joyful about Donald Trump. He is darkness in human form, the most negative politician I have seen in my lifetime.

He sees America as a failing nation. He always blames somebody else for his troubles. He calls his opponents and critics names. He’s all about tearing things down.

The lie he perpetuated about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio was right out of his playbook of darkness and hatefulness.

There are no boundaries to this man’s capacity to say and do anything to benefit himself.

That’s why my first thought when I heard the report about a threatened second assassination attempt on his life was that it was trumped up by Trump’s campaign to take attention away from his doubling down on immigrants eating cats and dogs.

I had no reason to think that except that Trump will say and do anything to benefit himself. I bet I’m not the only person who had that thought.

I truly believe the nation has had enough of Trump’s negativism, enough of his running the country down, enough of his being so full of himself that he says without any self-awareness that he is the only person who can fix all the problems that don’t exist in the first place.

Most Americans are tired of chaos and drudging up old grievances and complaints that sound as old as Trump himself.

In my many years of experience in ministry I have found that most people prefer light to darkness, hope to despair, love to hate, and they are always ready to embrace joy over misery.

And in November that is what will determine who they vote for, regardless of what the polls say before they do.

There will be some people who will stick with the darkness because walking in light is too painful for them. It forces them to see what’s really there, to admit they hear lies and repeat them as truths and hear truths they swear are lies.

But most of us won’t do that.

Joy is too contagious. One reason is that it makes the world big enough for everyone. It dispels the negative attitude that I lose if you win.

Joy is not Pollyannish. Joyous people know life is hard, but they also know life can be good. They know disappointment can knock the breath out of you, but also know you will catch it again and move ahead.

That’s the message Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are promoting and it’s working because people respond to a hopeful message.

Backed up by competence and strength, as is the case with Kamala, joy will help elect her as our next president.

And the day after the election all Americans will arise with a sense of hope because, to paraphrase the words of a psalm, we will be experiencing the truth that “darkness has been lingering for many nights, but joy has now come with the morning.”