When Vice President Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance on Monday night at the Democratic National Convention, she walked onstage to the sound of Beyoncé’s “Freedom,” a 2016 song that The Independent said “roars like thunder, and threatens to topple governments in its wake.”
The poetry and stirring melody of the track — which has become the theme song of her campaign, a revolutionary anthem for marshaling a revolutionary response from her supporters — were overshadowed only by the parallels between the artist and the politician themselves.
On one level, these are two Black women at the top of their fields performing at the top of their game at a time when their gifts are aligned with the public’s appetite.
On a more strategic level, Harris is deploying some of the same tactics around image and access that Beyoncé has insisted upon, and they are paying the same dividends.
Harris has allowed her campaign to transcend the minutiae of public policy. Instead, she has allowed herself to be what liberals, and many moderates, needed: a beacon of hope, above the tedium of bureaucracy, existing as an applaudable symbol.
And one way she has achieved this is by drawing massive crowds to her rallies, which is a self-reinforcing phenomenon. The more that her crowds swell, the more that others will want to be part of them. There is a concert vibe to these rallies, exactly the kind of collective exhaling and positive energy that many people needed.
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