If you want to know anything about Vice President Kamala Harris’ rapid emergence as the Democrats’ presumptive nominee this fall, you really need to know your memes.
From “brat summer” to “coconut trees,” it’s been a timeline filled with Harris-related memes for many ever since President Joe Biden stepped out of the 2024 presidential race on Sunday and endorsed his No. 2 to lead the party.
Harris’s supporters, taking to the Internet to voice their support for her candidacy, are, for the most part, reinventing earlier online activities that were once used by Harris’s critics to target her.
Some celebrities are also getting involved, with some seeing Harris’ candidacy as a wave of attention that could help overcome American apathy toward the largely binary general election between Biden and GOP nominee Donald Trump.
It could also be a way for Harris’s campaign to attract young voters, a group that Democrats need to turn out in November.
Here’s a meme primer to follow Harris’ newly launched 2024 campaign:
Coconuts are everywhere in Harris’ timeline mentions, an internet creature that began as a criticism of Harris and is now being adopted by her supporters.
The bio text on the @KamalaHQ account on X simply says, “Adding context,” a reference to a much-discussed speech in which the vice president emphatically recalled a phrase often used by her mother.
“She used to say to us, ‘I don’t know what’s happened to you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?'” Harris recalled, wearing a mauve suit at a ceremony at the White House in 2023. “You exist in the context of all that you live in and all that has come before you.”
At the time, the phrase, which sounded somewhat existential, was shared many times by critics and Harris was labeled an “alcoholic” or “crazy”.
Over the past two days, online users and politicians have used the clip, sometimes sincerely and sometimes ironically, to create coconut-themed posts in support of his candidacy.
Even Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz posted a photo of himself climbing a coconut tree, cementing his support for Harris on X. Colorado Governor Jared Polis also posted emojis for coconut, tree, and American flag on X.
“Kamala has a lot of word salad quotes that are extremely nonsensical,” said Corey Alpert, a staffer on Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 campaign and a former Biden White House advance staffer who describes himself as “always online.”
“Like you know what she’s trying to say, but it doesn’t really make sense. But it’s exactly the kind of weird authenticity that works online.”
Don’t know what “Brat Summer” is yet? Let us help you out.
Young celebrities want to help Harris by connecting him to their viral and loyal social media brands.
Most notably, pop musician Charli XCX posted on X that “Kamala is a brat,” a reference to her recently released album “Brat” and its crazy summer following. The post has received over 35 million impressions on the app, and Harris’ campaign promptly set its X banner photo in the snazzy Shrek-green hue of Charli’s “Brat” album cover.
A viral mashup of “Brat” and “Cocount Tree” together — playing Charli’s music over clips of Harris’ quips — has also spread widely on Instagram, X, and TikTok.
And yes, green “Brat” T-shirts are already hitting the market, as seen in this x post from Fire Island, New York.
It doesn’t matter if you’re not a math whiz – you can get it.
“I love Venn diagrams,” Harris said during an event in 2022. “There’s something special about analyzing those three circles and the intersections between them, isn’t there?”
The Republican National Committee posted a clip of the comment on YouTube to criticize Harris. But many of those commenting on the account’s post expressed their love for the set theory tool that shows overlapping regions of similarity.
Harris’s campaign has now also taken advantage of this opportunity, and her rapid response campaign has posted its own Venn diagram on X, depicting “holding Trump accountable” as the intersection of both Biden’s and Harris’ operations.
Young voters already had a bit more of an in-tune with Harris than Biden, and Alpert said those who are already online a lot are accustomed to reposting and sharing content quickly, so maybe the Harris meme moment was a thing for many of them.
“The cultural differences here between Gen Z and a lot of other groups are really huge,” Alpert said. “These little moments and lines that Gen Z is picking up and running with are what other groups — particularly boomers — find annoying or laughable, because they want candidates you can have a beer with.”
Young adults — those between the ages of 18 and 29 — had a slightly more favorable view of Harris than Biden in a poll commissioned by NORC in July, conducted after the debate but before Biden announced his withdrawal as the Democratic nominee, though a significant portion said they had no opinion.
Only one-quarter of 18-29 year-olds surveyed had a somewhat or very favorable opinion of Biden, and about 7 in 10 had an unfavorable opinion of him. In contrast, about 4 in 10 young adults had a favorable opinion of Harris, while about 4 in 10 had an unfavorable opinion and about 2 in 10 had no idea who she was.
In a July survey, about 4 in 10 people aged 18–29 had a favorable view of Trump, while about half had an unfavorable view and about 1 in 10 did not know enough about him.
Schatz, the Hawaii senator who posted a photo of himself climbing a coconut tree, said that although Harris is not part of Gen Z, what Gen Z wants is not necessarily a candidate their own age, but someone who is “in the mainstream of pop culture.”
“We must win decisively among young people, and frankly, one of the obstacles was that they didn’t see anybody who spoke for the values of the Democratic Party, who they could relate to,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday. “Politics is certainly about policy, but it’s also about vibes, and the vibes, as the kids say, are impeccable.”
Yee reported from Washington. Meg Kinard reported from Chapin, South Carolina. Associated Press writers Amelia Thomson Deveaux and Mary Clare Jalonick from Washington and James Pollard from New York contributed to this report.
Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnard.
This article is generated from an automated news agency feed without any modifications to the text.
