I stood before a mailbox in Manhattan, holding my absentee ballot for the Maine primary. Bernie angry, I thought happily. Bernie smash.
And I wasn’t even voting for him.
No, my vote had gone to Elizabeth Warren, who from the beginning of the campaign had impressed me with her optimism. Watching Warren, I got the sense that even the long slog of a presidential run could be done with good humor and exuberance.
There was a time when optimism was considered a desirable trait in politicians: Barack Obama and Bill Clinton had it; Ronald Reagan had it in spades.
And Joe Biden has it. In his 2012 victory speech, President Obama hailed him as “America’s happy warrior.” Who knows? It may be that it is this — a sense of buoyancy and hope — that accounted for his extraordinary series of Super Tuesday victories.
Back in the days of Vice President Hubert Humphrey, this was known as “the politics of joy.”
“I enjoy life,” Humphrey once said. “It’s a delight. You only live a short time. You ought to enjoy every fleeting moment.”
Humphrey was the quintessential Happy Warrior, although the phrase didn’t originate with him. It was, in fact, coined by William Wordsworth back in the early 19th century, in a poem that Grover Cleveland is said to have loved so much that he wanted it read at his funeral.
What is a Happy Warrior? It’s someone for whom the battle itself is the source of joy. Or as Molly Ivins once wrote, “You got to have fun while you’re fightin’ for freedom, ’cause you don’t always win.”
Thinking about it now, the idea of politician-as-Happy-Warrior seems quaint, like elbow-length evening gloves for women or men wearing stovepipe hats. Maybe Happy Warriors were a better fit back when the country was, you know, happier. There was a time when optimism — about ourselves, about the nation, about our sense of history — seemed baked into the American character.
Senator Bernie Sanders is not a Happy Warrior. A warrior, definitely. Happy? Not so much.
Not that there haven’t been moments of joy in his campaign. During his last run, a little sparrow landed on the podium while he was making a speech, and the Vermont senator’s face lit up. Then the sparrow took off, and for just a second Sanders watched it fly off and gestured with one hand toward the heavens. “I think there may be some symbolism here,” he said. Nice.
But more often Sanders seems to be driven less by joy than by fire, less inspired by the delights of what President Richard Nixon called “the arena” than by the seriousness of the revolution he is trying to bring about.
There should be bumper stickers: Bernie Sanders: the Crabby Warrior. Sometimes he gets so furious while he’s speaking that he changes colors.
Which brings me back to the Incredible Hulk, and my moment by the mailbox with my absentee ballot.
The Hulk — the greener, angrier version of the scientist Bruce Banner — is known for his talent at tearing things apart: trees, a school bus, even (on one occasion) his own house.
Sanders’ to-smash list is a little different: pharmaceutical companies, college tuitions, the prison system. He is not the Hulk, and not only because he turns red instead of green when he gets his dander up. But like the Hulk, Sanders too is driven, at times, by what seems like rage.
And he’s right: We should be filled with rage.
It’s rage, not joy, that we should feel when we think about the Republican-controlled Senate failing to remove Donald Trump from office for offenses they all know he committed.
It’s rage, not joy, that we should feel when we think about Mitch McConnell refusing to hold hearings for Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland.
It’s rage, not joy, that we should feel when we consider our convoluted health care system, and the burden of student debt, and all our crumbling roads and bridges.
We should be filled with rage, not joy, because of all the ways in which our democracy does not work.
And because we are at the mercy of Donald Trump, a man who resembles the previous 43 presidents less than he resembles a villain out of Marvel Comics. And not one of the smart ones, like, say, Thanos, but one of the dumb ones, like Emil Blonsky in “The Incredible Hulk,” who — driven by ego and vanity — transforms himself into a giant destructive blob. That villain’s name: Abomination.
I admit I have spent more hours than I care to admit streaming movies from the Marvel Comics Universe this winter, in an attempt to get through what I pray are the final months of the Trump presidency. It’s one reason, standing there by the mailbox with my absentee ballot, I fantasized about Sanders as the Hulk, and Trump as Abomination.
Once you watch enough of those films, everybody starts to seem like a cartoon. Thinking of the Sanders campaign, I’m put in mind of the first “Avengers” film, when Captain America turns to Bruce Banner at a moment of crisis and notes, “Dr. Banner, now might be a really good time for you to get angry.”
“That’s my secret, Captain,” Banner replies, before hulking out. “I’m always angry.”
The Trump era has left so many people feeling just like this — angry all the time, so infuriated by the cruelty and the lies that we forget that the process of taking him down ought to fill us with joy.
To quote Molly Ivins again, “Keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
Hulk smash. But optimism and hope smash too. Why should we not be happy warriors, even as we prepare to battle our archnemesis?
You only live a short time. Enjoy every fleeting moment.
Jennifer Finney Boylan, a contributing New York Times opinion writer, is a professor of English at Barnard College. She is the author of the forthcoming “Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs.”
