Why Kamala is Winning the Meme War Hillary Lost
And why we'll be walking tuah polling place and voting on that thang
If you’ve been following election news, you’ve probably noticed that there has been an outpouring of enthusiasm for Kamala Harris among the young and very-online. At one point, Harris was seen as completely unelectable and unpopular among both liberals and centrists on Twitter. In fact, for most of her vice presidential run, she’s only appeared on social media in a handful of bizarre videos where she is going on some wacky side-quest or singing an off-key, slightly unsettling version of “The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round” before cackling at nothing in particular.
The vibe definitely shifted in her favor when the Left agreed it was time for Biden to step aside, after his disastrous debate performance and continued gaffes, such as referring to Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “President Putin.” Although there were whisperings about Biden being replaced with someone “more electable” like Gavin Newsom, and although people were concerned that Kamala Harris would never stand a chance against Trump, ultimately Biden endorsed her and it’s pretty clear she’s the nominee.
And what did we do? We rallied around her, and the enthusiasm doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Donald Trump and the Right have attempted to slam her, but are coming up short—resorting to juvenile blowjob jokes right out of 1995, attacks on her for “pretending to be Black,” and the incredibly low-energy nickname “Laughing Kamala.”
But the enthusiasm around Kamala isn’t just about the fact that she isn’t Trump. It’s also not limited to agreement with her policies or approval of her record. A lot of the enthusiasm, at least on my side of Twitter, is nearly ironic. It started around the time that whisperings of Biden dropping out were becoming a reality. Leftists who previously tweeted that they would never vote for Joe Biden, and young progressives who may have voted for him but only out of obligation, started adopting a coconut and palm tree emoji in their usernames (a reference to Kamala’s infamous tipsy-aunt-style comment, “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?”) Kamala Harris was posed as a direct contrast to the Joe Biden problem. The jokes about her started out as daydreaming more than anything—what if we had a president under the age of seventy-five? What if we could be excited about an election again? Oh well, that’ll never happen.
After Biden officially dropped out and endorsed Harris, things started to feel real. Singer Charli XCX got in on the action by tweeting “Kamala IS brat,” tying Kamala Harris to her hit album of the summer, Brat, and its trademark lime green color, which is now frequently used by the Kamala HQ Twitter account.
Amid all the Kamala excitement, a very important question was raised: why is Kamala being brat cool, but Hillary Clinton’s infamous “Pokemon Go To the Polls” line so cringe and embarrassing? When Clinton said that during her campaign in 2016, it was used as an example of her being out of touch, lame, and trying too hard to appeal to young voters while simultaneously being condescending toward them. And yet, people seem to be tolerating Kamala Harris becoming synonymous with a popular album that personifies being a young party girl. It seems that even if she were to lean into the meme herself, it wouldn’t be embarrassing. Put simply:
I voted for Hillary Clinton, but I think many liberals agree that her campaign failed spectacularly to be cool. You could argue that coolness shouldn’t matter, or that women are held to an unreasonable standard of likability (both are true!) So I’m not here to slam Hillary Clinton for being “cringe,” but rather explain how she failed to win the meme war that Kamala Harris is currently winning. In fact, prior to Kamala becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee, the below tweet went viral, once again invoking Hillary and her painful attempts to reach young voters:
The best way I can explain it is this:
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