Earlier this summer, when the Supreme Court ended a 50-year federal right to abortion, Democrats had no choice but to place their faith in voters to rebel against the ruling. Until tonight, however, no one could definitively say whether Roe v. Wade outrage would carry over to the polls.Tonight in Kansas, Americans got their first hint of that response, and it was a resounding victory for abortion rights.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.“People in the Northern Hemisphere are now neck-deep in a summer of travel—and so, too, are the coronaviruses they’re carrying,” our Science writer Katherine J. Wu reported in early July. As the summer goes on and the coronavirus subvariant BA.

In the 1980s, shortly before I was born, my father killed a male white-tailed deer in the woods of Oklahoma, harvested his flesh, and mounted his head. Years later, my brothers regaled me with the tale of Tony, as they posthumously named the buck. “Dad shot him,” they told me, with glee. “And then he made us eat him.” I hated the circumstances of Tony’s death. But I was also entranced.

Cheer up. Feel better. Don’t worry, be happy. Smile more. As an emotion, cheerfulness has astonishing range. At its best, it’s a style of kindness that we extend to others, a salve during times of trouble, and a way of coping with trauma and despair. At its worst, cheer can be breezily dishonest, an on-demand feeling that we can project to get what we want. It can also be a burden, especially for women and people of color, many of whom feel pressure to be constantly upbeat.

The old saying is “Democrats fall in love; Republicans fall in line.” But that’s not quite true. Democrats wait for a dream candidate to come along—a Bill Clinton or a Barack Obama—and they go out of their minds with excitement and ardor. But when they don’t find one, they kiss a frog and wait to see what happens.