Dance-Off—Kamala vs. Don
Note: I first published this story in late July, never imaginaing that Trump would devolve a Pennsylvania town hall into an awkward and disturbing 39-minute “dance” on stage. As several MAGA faithful fainted in the heat, Trump shrugged and said, “Let’s just listen to music. Who the hell wants to listen to questions?” The Washington Post ran video clips of the former president “swaying to songs as his crowd slowly dwindled.” Trump’s sycophants on stage seemed bewildered as he gyrated silently like some drunken geezer at a family gathering, prompting his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, to post on X: “Hope he’s okay?” Trump is obviously not okay. David Frum in The Atlantic concludes bluntly, “To watch the event is to see signs of someone having a breakdown.”
For too many years our country have been forced to deal with a man who was never fit to be president and is now showing severe cognitive decline. We’d had to dance with Donald Trump, a sullen, smug narcissist who stomps on stage, jerking his little fists to Y.M.C.A. How does anyone dance with a fist pump, a tight-lipped smirk, a bully boy who steps on your feet and will never follow your lead? Who is bored and keeps dancing when his dance partners faint at his feet?
How much more enthralling to dance with a woman who high-kicks and belly laughs to a boisterous bass drum, as she keeps perfect time to a children’s marching band. Or dances with an umbrella, light-footed and happy like “Singing in the Rain.” Or the Kamala Harris who struts her stuff to Beyonce’s“Freedom.”
Even the lyrics of each candidates’ soundtrack are a dead giveaway as to what lies ahead for us in the next four years. Trump’s YMCA dance program promises “you can hang out with the boys,” and Harris’s “Freedom” exults, “I break chains all by myself.” The history of Young Men’s Christian Association is also telling. Originally, the YMCA was supposed to be “more supervision of your social life — a kind of management as to how you behaved.” That original intent echoes the prudish and encroaching Religious Right’s plans to supervise and manage anyone who doesn’t fit in their mold. Like creepy monitors at a high school prom.
You can hear this snide overreach and drumbeat in Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, who insists forced birth on women with no exemptions for rape or incest. These Christian cops, the henchmen of the patriarchy, will throw women and their doctors in jail if they do not breed, bow down to their male mates, and dance to only their tune. As a survivor of a Southern Baptist upbringing, Tia Levings, author of A Well-Trained Life: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy explains their “overarching theme is that all power and authority comes through men . . . I was not brought up as a person capable of knowing my own mind and my own beliefs.”
I also grew up in that Southern Baptist theocracy and early on refused to dance with the sexist and racist soundtrack of a long-ago Confederacy that enslaved other people. I was appalled that in Sunday School the only time girls raised their hands was to show off their engagement rings; amazed that women supported this patriarchal imprisonment, the domestic tyranny of procreation as our only job — or recreation.
The juvenile bad boys’ club of Trump, shape-shifting Vance, manically stage-jumping Elon Musk and all the red-tied GOP fan club swooning over a convicted felon is so over. They may be billionaires and bullies, but we don’t have to dance with them or “hang out with the boys” and their wet dream of dominance. As Kamala Harris says, “We’re not going back,” to the 1950s where women are wallflowers waiting for men to ask us to dance.
It’s darkly comic that the Village People’s YMCA was adapted as a gay disco anthem heralding its “reputation as a popular cruising and hookup spot, particularly for the younger men to whom it was addressed.” SNL did a hilarious skit on YMCA about Trump—buff, bare-chested boys in hard hats, cowboy boots, and gay police gear, raise fists and hump to the song, singing the lyrics, “Cease and desist!” after Trump used their music without consent. Rufus Wainright, whose poignant cover of Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” was outraged that Trump played his song at the Oct. 14th Pennsylvania town hall. “Witnessing Trump and his supporters commune with this music was the height of blasphemy . . .” Wainright said. He notes that Cohen’s song “has become an anthem dedicated to peace, love, and acceptance of the truth.”
In a snarky commentary on Trump’s graceless YMCA rally jigs, Bill Mahr vowed to show Trump’s first-bumping routine every week until election with the caption, “Twist and Pout,” and his New Rules advises: “Someone should tell Trump that when he’s dancing, he looks like he’s jerking off two guys at once.” Once you’ve seen this tease, it’s impossible to ever see Trump’s dance as anything but the ridiculous choreography of a wanna-be bully who has made so many grown men bend over and cower like adolescent boys on a boarding school playground.
You wanna dance, Trump? Try dancing with a strong woman instead of your boy gang or fainting fans. Strong women have been the ones to hold Trump and his JD gang accountable. In courtrooms, E. Jean Carroll’s jury found him guilty of sexual harassment, Lettica James’ New York jury convicted Trump of 34 felonies, Fani Willis’s grand jury indicted Trump and his political gang of tampering with an election; and Jack Smith, who has prosecuted war criminals in the Hague, is on task to bring Trump to court in D.C. and Georgia, even as the Supreme Court’s Trump enablers offer him some never-before-needed immunity.
In her 1981 Canadian high school yearbook, Kamala Harris is credited for founding a dance troupe called “Midnight Magic.” Dancing with her troupe was “her favorite pastime” as they performed at community centers and fundraisers. Harris’s dance memes have gone viral. Some TikTokers declare that the debates should be a dance-off.
Never underestimate the power of a dance. The joyful rebellion that greets Kamala Harris is electrifying. It’s an invitation to dance with a woman who celebrates our freedoms, who prosecutes the petulant, patriarchal privilege that has been the dour downbeat, the walking bass of our political soundtrack far too long. Trump is a one-note samba of narcissism. His dance, compared to Kamala Harris’s effortless grace, looks weird and pathetically out of step. We’ve had enough of Trump dominating our dance cards. Stealing our music.
Yes, Kamala, we are delighted to accept your invitation to dance. We know the steps.~
Bio: Brenda Peterson is the author of over 20 books, including the memoir I Want to Be Left Behind: Finding Rapture Here on Earth, which was chosen as an Indie Next and “Great Read” by independent booksellers. Her novel, Duck and Cover, was a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year” and her new books are Wild Chorus: Finding Harmony with Whales, Wolves, and Other Animals and Stiletto, a murder mystery, both also just out in audiobook. www.BrendaPetersonBooks.com
