Vice-President is a super star bringing joy and optimism to American democracy

To the Editor:  Re “The Patriotic Choice for President” (New York Times, Oct. 6) echo🔉 opinion letter📩 :

We choose freedom❗

We choose hope❗

We choose joy❗

Kamala Harris’s sudden, unexpected (joyful😇) and historic run for the presidency has done something I thought impossible, something I believed in my despair was part of a distant past that could never possibly happen again in a country so deeply divided: She brought back the kind of excitement, hope and energy that I have not experienced since the presidential election of John F. Kennedy, whom I met as a teenager while attending one of his campaign rallies with my family.

She has rekindled a feeling that wasn’t dead, but simply dormant and waiting for the right person to come along at the right moment to bring it back to life.

She is doing so with what amounts to a coalition that crosses political, societal and ideological lines: Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, young and old.

As your editorial states, hers is an inclusive, forward-looking approach that draws its strength from optimism and cohesion, while her opponent fuels his with pessimism and ugly divisiveness. She wants to work within our democratic system to improve the lives of people across the spectrum; he wants to tear that system down to achieve his own selfish goals.

Kamala Harris has reignited something in this country that I thought was gone. She deserves our vote, and our country deserves her.

From Greg Josep in Sun City, Ariz.