Vice President Kamala Harris, who is now vying for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, is apparently leaning into memes intended to mock her.
Harris’ campaign appears to be attempting a bit of political judo, using her opponents’ attacks against them while embracing online meme culture.
“kamala IS brat,” the British pop star Charli XCX posted on X just hours after U.S. President Joe Biden withdrew as the Democratic nominee and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the party against former President Donald Trump for the country’s vote in November.
For some, the “brat” tweet could appear cryptic or confusing. For Gen Z—and increasingly, the Kamala Harris campaign itself and the Democratic Party, too—the message couldn’t be more clear: Harris is the meme candidate.
Shortly after Biden’s dramatic announcement, the @BidenHQ official campaign account on X converted to @KamalaHQ, and it has already fully embraced Harris’ internet appeal, which some observers believe could be a meaningful gamechanger in the election.
From coconuts to Venn diagrams, the Harris campaign and her supporters have turned the virality of the Vice President—as well as some of her awkwardest moments that opponents once latched onto as signs of incompetence—into profile-boosting symbols and soundbites that youth voters, in particular, can get behind.
The “brat” meme came about due to a music artist’s use of the term to describe “that girl who is a little messy and likes to party, and maybe says dumb things sometimes, who feels herself but then also maybe has a breakdown but parties through it.”
Harris’ team has also leaned into the “coconut tree” trope, which is related to a video of a speech the vice president gave last year.
The @KamalaHQ account bio—“Providing context”—references another popular meme associated with the Vice President.
The meme has its roots in a May 2023 speech Harris gave at the White House in which she relayed an anecdote: “My mother used to—she would give us a hard time sometimes, and 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?’” she said with a laugh. “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”
At the time, the GOP War Room, an arm of the Republican National Committee, shared the clip in an apparent attempt to mock her.
But Harris supporters have reclaimed the coconut tree. As pressure ramped up in recent weeks for Biden to step aside and Harris to take his place at the top of the ticket, a Democratic operative described themself as “coconut pilled” to CNN (a play on the “red pill” alt-right meme). Social media users joked about “Operation Coconut Tree” and a “Coconut Republic,” and Washington-area bars began serving coconut-inspired cocktails.
Prominent Democrats have begun adding coconut and tree emojis to their social media bios and elsewhere to express solidarity with Harris.
The Harris campaign is also making use of the “Venn diagram” saga that came about after a speech the vice president gave in 2022 in which she expressed her adoration of the diagrams.
“I love Venn diagrams,” Harris said in October 2022. “I really do. I love Venn diagrams. It’s just something about those three circles and the analysis about where there is the intersection, right?”
The RNC compiled a minute-long compilation of her praising the charts and called it “cringe.”
But on Sunday, @KamalaHQ embraced the meme with a new Venn diagram of its own, showing the intersection of Biden’s campaign and hers as “holding Trump accountable.”
If done correctly, this strategy might just catch on. It is similar to how supporters of former President Donald Trump embraced the “deplorables” comment Hillary Clinton made about them during the 2016 race. Harris’ campaign appears to be trying to use the right’s mockery to its advantage.
However, there is a caveat here. If they focus too much on highlighting these tropes, it could backfire because it would only shine more attention on Harris’ gaffes and awkward remarks during speeches and interviews, bringing them back into the spotlight. Indeed, there are plenty of these moments for Republicans to seize upon because the vice president has a penchant for providing her opponents with much-needed ammo to use against her – especially in digital spaces.
