Meme-based canvassing: Why Kamala Harris has a good chance of winning the election

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Brat, 'Veep,' emoji

After President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, Vice President Kamala Harris immediately joined the presidential race in his stead. The question is whether a mere three months is enough for Harris to mount a campaign capable of defeating Donald Trump. Her efforts as vice president found approval among less than 40% of Americans, and many call her weird and awkward. For instance, Republicans are actively distributing a video reel in which Harris repeats one and the same meaningless phrase on several occasions. The Harris campaign team is trying to transform her flaws into benefits by adopting the most powerful weapon of today's cyberspace — memes.

In 2023, Biden and Harris received actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who played the role of a gaffe-prone presidential understudy in the comedy series ‘Veep,’ at the White House. Biden joked that in season three of the show, the Louis-Dreyfus character had come into control of the Oval Office after the president declined to compete for reelection due to his wife's poor health. Who would have thought that the comedy series would prove to be prophetic? After Harris announced her decision to run for president, the views of Veep Season 1 surged by 353%. In the show, Meyer [Spoiler Alert!]

The coincidences do not end there. Like Selina Meyer, Kamala Harris can sometimes utter bizarre and inane fragments of speech, and multiple comparisons between the real and fictional “veeps” can be found online.

In the show, Louis-Dreyfus’s character treats her subordinates like a true tyrant. Similarly, the American media have described Harris as a tough boss who has created a toxic atmosphere in her office, causing many team members to leave. In one of the fictional episodes, the VP is mentioned as having a disapproval rating of 66%. Harris is doing a bit better — 51% disapprove and 38% approve of her performance — but remains one of the least popular vice presidents in history, complementing Joe Biden’s disastrous rating as president.

Yet she quickly secured endorsements from Biden and other top Democrats. Within a week of Biden’s announcement, her candidacy was endorsed by Congressional Democratic Caucus leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, former President Barack Obama, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, all of whom had pressed Biden to drop out of the race. Some of them thought Harris didn't have much of a chance of beating Trump because of the low ratings she largely inherited from the president. However, with just over three months left before the election, it is safer to choose a politician already known to the nation than to look for a fresh face. Besides, it's one thing to convince 81-year-old Biden to withdraw his candidacy, and quite another to reject the nomination of a woman of color who just spent nearly four years living one heartbeat away from the presidency.

Notably, while Selina Meyer had four rivals in her party’s primaries, Harris is likely to have none. She was officially endorsed by party chairmen in all 50 states, and by over 85% of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Their votes will be more than enough to confirm Harris as the party’s official presidential candidate.

The Democratic Party has decided not even to wait for the convention in Chicago on Aug. 19-22, and instead will hold early voting at an online delegate call on Aug. 1. A potential rival to Harris would need to garner the votes of at least 300 delegates in advance, but it is unlikely that anyone would dare to challenge her.

One of her many endorsers is Hawaii State Senator Brian Schatz. He shared a photograph on X of himself climbing a coconut tree, a reference to the non-fictional VP’s May 2023 speech in which she quoted her mother: “She would say to us, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree!’ You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”

The phrase quickly became a meme, and the accompanying awkward laughter became her trademark mannerism. The Harris campaign’s X account now features the motto “Providing context” as the bio, and her supporters mark their accounts with palm and coconut emojis. Even though the VP's campaign has so far been only a hastily rebranded version of Biden’s campaign, Harris has already raised more than $100 million in donations in just a few days.

Her advisers have managed to jump on the wave of one of the hottest TikTok summer trends — Brat Girl, a reference to Brat, a new album by British performer Charli XCX, mostly represented on the social network by the track titled “Apple.” This track was frequently used as background music for video reels of Harris speaking in public. When Charli XCX herself voiced her support for the VP, stating on social media that “Kamala is brat,” the success was complete. Even the Harris campaign account now mimics the Charli XCX album cover with its neon green background. Her supporters have already been noticed wearing Brat-themed merchandise.

Another stroke of luck for the Harris team was to find Kamala on “The Simpsons,” America’s famous “predictions foundry.” Back in 2021, during Joe Biden's inauguration, the vice president's outfit was compared to Lisa Simpson’s attire from a 1996 episode titled “Bart to the Future,” in which the middle Simpson child grew up to become president. Today that resemblance has taken on a new pertinence. Al Jean, producer of “The Simpsons,” wrote on social media that he's happy to be a part of this “prediction.”

At the ComicCon festival in San Diego, a panel on “The Simpsons” featured a clip of Harris reciting a famous line from the show’s classic period: “We must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom,” — a quote from season eight’s “Treehouse of Horror VII” that aired Oct. 27, 1996, in which space aliens assume the forms of presidential candidates Bill Clinton and Bob Dole.

Meanwhile, the price for the meme token Kamala Horris (KAMA), named after the VP, has set a new record, showing growth of almost 4000% from its low point on Jun. 18.

All of these memes demonstrate the online enthusiasm for Harris, but they also evidence the creativity of her campaign and her willingness to reach out to younger voters. In that respect, Harris is very different from both Donald Trump and Joe Biden. The latter also tried to use memes — such as Dark Brandon, which portrayed the president as a chiseled older man with bright red eyes — but while merch featuring the image accounted for nearly half of all Biden sales, young people found it increasingly difficult to connect the meme to the feeble aspect of the real-life president.

Copmala: Prosecutor vs. Felon

Kamala Harris built a large portion of her political career in law enforcement. From 2004 to 2011, she was San Francisco's district attorney — the first black woman in that office. Harris aggressively fought violent crime, pushing conviction rates to 87% in murder cases and to 90% for felony gun offenses in her first two years on the job. Nevertheless, she opposed the death penalty and refused to seek capital punishment for a cop killer in 2004, despite pressure from many California politicians.

After that, Harris served two terms as California's attorney general. In addition to prosecuting organized crime gangs involved in violent crime, drug trafficking, and smuggling, she frequently litigated against large corporations with a presence in the state. During her eight years as attorney general, Harris secured significant penalty payments from insurance and phone companies, the automotive concern Volkswagen, and from oil giant BP. In 2015, she won a case against for-profit education firm Corinthian Colleges, which was found guilty of fraud and was forced to pay $1.2 billion.

The image of the tough prosecutor has become an important part of her political persona, especially in the context of the indictment of former President — and rival presidential candidate — Donald Trump. Speaking at a rally, Harris reminded the audience that she is a seasoned crime fighter:

“I took on perpetrators of all kinds: predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers; cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump's type.”

Unsurprisingly, the image of the “law enforcement agent,” along with the nickname Copmala, has also appeared in numerous memes. One such meme is a skin for the popular computer game Fortnite that depicts Harris in a police uniform.

During the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, her image as a law-and-order type was more of a disadvantage, as she received serious backlash from Democratic voters for refusing to release inmates convicted of nonviolent crimes despite prison overcrowding and for supporting a law to hold parents whose children skip school administratively accountable. A meme from that period shows Harris in a police uniform arresting a child. But now the law-and-order angle may play in her favor, especially among hesitant voters who are repelled by Trump’s scandalous image and ongoing legal troubles.

From failed primaries to the vice presidency

After leaving her post as attorney general, Harris ran for the Senate from California. There, she gained a reputation as one of the most liberal members of the Democratic caucus and actively opposed the Trump administration, especially on the policy of separating the children of undocumented immigrants from their families. Like other members of her party, she voted twice to impeach President Trump.

In the 2019 primaries, Kamala Harris was highly critical of Joe Biden. At a debate, she chided the former vice president for opposing racial integration efforts at public schools. Her online followers called themselves K-Hive (“Kamala's Hive”) and defended her so zealously against any attacks that supporters of other candidates accused Harris supporters of bullying and toxic behavior.

However, her campaign was never able to garner significant support, and in December 2019, Harris dropped out of the race before the first primary contest. Despite her criticism of Biden, it was Harris who endorsed his candidacy in March 2020 over far-left Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. And in August of that year, Biden announced that Harris would be his running mate. Together they won the election, and a clip of Harris calling Biden and laughingly saying “We did it, Joe! You're going to be the next president of the United States,” went viral on social media. The tweet with the video made it to the top 10 most popular posts of 2020.

From there, however, a less favorable meme emerged. In 2021, Joe Biden directed Harris to meet with Central American leaders to discuss potential ways of reducing the number of migrants trying to enter the U.S. through Mexico. This coincided with a record increase in illegal migration. And while Harris lacked the authority and functionality to deal with problems at the border herself, Republicans were quick to accuse her of inaction on the issue. For many voters, she is now synonymous with the border crisis.

Can Harris beat Trump?

Kamala Harris is still notably unpopular, and her approval rating is almost identical to Biden's. In a potential race against Trump, her numbers are also similar to what Biden had been putting up a few weeks ago. With the election just over three months away, Harris has very little time to build a strong and effective campaign.

Despite her unconventional path to the Democratic nomination, Harris is still faced with two challenges common for all presidential candidates: she needs to mobilize her party’s traditional electorate while attracting a decisive share of undecided voters. On the first count, Harris appears to be making progress, with polls showing Democrats with an improved standing among voters of color, women, and young people now that Biden has bowed out. The second task is more difficult, but the choice of a moderate vice presidential candidate from a swing state could help. The Internet is already rife with memes featuring liquor store signs and restaurant menus mentioning “rich whites” — a play on words referring to wine and the race of possible candidates.

Harris has professed her love for Venn diagrams more than once — another memeable moment — and her supporters used this template to create viral content illustrating the benefits of potential VP picks for the sitting vice president.

A debate between Trump and Harris is set to take place as early as Sept. 10. Admittedly, the Trump team has already said they will only agree to a meeting when Harris is officially nominated as a candidate. But we're already seeing a lot of enthusiasm. Within a week, Harris' campaign has raised $200 million, her headquarters has recruited 170,000 volunteers, and more than 100,000 voters, mostly younger than 34 years old, have registered to vote in the election.