“You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?!” Vice President Kamala Harris famously asked with her signature zany laugh in a May 2023 speech. “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you!” The coconut tree aphorism—which can actually be attributed to Harris’s mother, Shyamala—is why your social media feed has probably been full of coconut emojis and memes since Sunday afternoon, when President Joe Biden announced he would not be seeking reelection in November, and endorsed Harris to replace him on the Democratic ticket.
Since Biden’s disastrous June 27 debate performance, there have been a lot of memes: about Biden and his forgetfulness, about Nancy Pelosi’s purported role as puppet-master in his stepping aside, and also, significantly, about Harris. Moments that might have once been perceived as awkward—Harris giggling like a mischievous aunt on her second glass of wine at a wedding, her mom-dancing, her less-than-enthusiastic reaction when Drew Barrymore earnestly asked her to be “Momala for the country” in April—have become a strange source of comfort these past few weeks. Many have commented on the resemblance between the current situation and the plot of the HBO comedy series Veep, in which Julia Louis-Dreyfus played a gaffe-prone vice president. Now that Harris is the front-runner to replace Biden, it’s becoming clear that her memeability is one of her political strengths. In a media environment where attention trumps all, could Harris be about to have the last laugh?
The memeification of Kamala Harris has been going on for years. In 2019, during the Democratic primary for the last presidential election, a short clip of her wistfully waving into the distance went viral. In classic internet style, it took over news feeds for weeks before disappearing forever without explanation. (According to Harris, the original context was actually a “heartbreaking” visit to an immigration detention center.) Since she was elected vice president—a role that involves a lot of pomp, ceremony, and public speaking—her supporters have made meme fodder out of everything from her love of Venn diagrams to her long (and sometimes rambling) definitions of things like “the significance of the passage of time” to her (incredible!) impression of her Jewish mother-in-law and her advice on seasoning a Thanksgiving turkey. Put simply, she is internet gold.
The Harris memes make some observers uneasy. You could argue that they distract from a more substantive discussion of her political record (which should, of course, be open to criticism and scrutiny) or that they betray an uncomfortable level of familiarity that too often gets applied to Black female celebrities online.
They might concern her supporters, too, because there is a fine line between being the subject of a meme and the butt of a joke. This process can often feel gendered: In the 2016 Democratic primary, for example, a popular “Bernie or Hillary” meme centered on the presumption that Sanders was “badass” and Clinton was an old-fashioned “Karen” on a range of hypothetical issues, from werewolves to anime. It was quite obviously sexist, and like most of the memes about Clinton, it laughed at her, not #WithHer. Male politicians aren’t usually diminished in the same way by becoming the internet’s joke of the week—look at the memes about Biden’s “bromance” with Obama in 2016, which made both men appear lovable and normalized the idea of Biden as the other man’s successor.
But in the post–Donald Trump political landscape, where attention is just as important as policy, the memes seem to be helping Harris. Republicans, including former president and current nominee Trump, have already tried to attack her for her kooky moments and her laugh, but that has largely backfired. (As far as nicknames go, “Laughing Kamala” and “Giggling Kamala” actually sound endearing.) When the Republican National Committee made a four-minute compilation video of all the times Harris has said, “What can be, unburdened by what has been,” her supporters turned it into an unofficial campaign slogan. Likewise, Republicans actually posted the “coconut tree” moment in May 2023 to attack her—and look how that turned out.
Trump is disturbingly good at commanding attention online. (He basically rage-tweeted himself into the presidency in 2016.) And if Harris is going to take him on, she needs to be heard. It’s possible that when the K-Hive uses her more entertaining moments to get as many eyes on her as possible, that will actually carve out space for her more serious talking points.
We saw this over the weekend, when an ad from her 2019 primary campaign resurfaced which positions Harris as the anti-Trump. “She shut down for-profit colleges,” the voice-over declares. “He was the for-profit college. She prosecuted sex predators. He is one,” and so on. The clip has been racking up millions of views. Sure enough, this was the exact note Harris chose to strike when she kicked off her campaign in Delaware on Monday, describing how she “took on perpetrators of all kinds” as a prosecutor and the former attorney general of California. “Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain,” she said, listing her targets, to cheers from the audience. “So hear me when I say: I know Donald Trump’s type.”
Kamala Harris at her first public appearance since announcing her intention to run for president
There is a deeper story here about the contradictions of female ambition, too. Women in politics are often discouraged from being too direct about their ambitions, but are then characterized as conniving or underhand for walking the road to power that is available to them. They have to act like they fell (out of a coconut tree, perhaps?) into a position of power, almost by accident, but then they’re of course accused of being “unqualified.” (Or, in the case of Harris, a “DEI hire.”)
Whether or not you share her politics, Hillary Clinton knows a thing or two about these contradictions. (Her most enduring contribution to the online lexicon—“but her emails!”—serves as a reminder of the double standards she faced.) In her 2017 post-election memoir, What Happened, she considers the way her gender impacted the way she was perceived by the public. She argues that during both her moments of peak popularity—as First Lady, then as Secretary of State for her one-time adversary, Barack Obama—she was speaking on behalf of a man, whereas things started to change whenever she started advocating for herself as a politician. Perhaps the sudden enthusiasm for Harris shows that we are still more comfortable with a woman swooping in to save the day for a flailing man, rather than seeing her advocate for herself from the outset. Much like Veep’s fictional Senator Selina Meyer, Harris is navigating a system that is not designed to take her ambitions seriously.
It helps that the political landscape for women has shifted since Clinton ran for president. Part of Clinton’s legacy is that it no longer feels earthshaking for women to run for office. The memes about Harris feel like a reflection of that normalcy, and let’s face it, they’re operating on a much higher level than the Hillary pantsuit jokes or “Pokémon Go to the polls.” Perhaps, if we’re enjoying Harris’s cringe moments, that’s a sign that we collectively feel less anxious that Republicans will be able to effectively use them to pick her apart—if anything, the memes might shield her from some of that.
This might be why Harris (or the team operating her social accounts) is leaning into it. All this political drama is unfolding as we bask in “Brat summer,” a moment when Charli XCX’s vulnerable brand of pop and signature lime-green aesthetic have captured the zeitgeist. Hours after Biden’s withdrawal announcement, a squad of gay men (because who else?) appeared in custom lime-green vests with “kamala” written on them. (The devil works hard, but Fire Island gays work harder.) Then, Charli herself posted “kamala IS brat” in response to the various fan-cams circulating among terminally online people highlighting a certain synergy between them.
Some of the lyrics to Brat are, ahem, not exactly prosecutor-approved. But the official campaign account, Kamala HQ, soon changed its banner to Brat-themed green. Harris then followed Charli on socials—just in case anyone needed more proof the vice president is in on the joke. The interaction resulted in a hilariously awkward CNN segment in which “Gen Z correspondent” Jamie Gangel tried to explain to a bemused Jake Tapper why “being a brat” is actually “cool.” It was a shrewd move that made Harris more relevant, while cementing Charli’s “Brat summer” as a cultural phenomenon in the most mainstream legacy media spaces. For both women, it was the kind of advertising that money can’t buy.
Brat has saved the vibe of summer 2024, but looking ahead to November, Harris will likely have the notably more daunting task of saving America from a second Trump term. All the memes and in-jokes might seem silly when the stakes are so high, but they’re driving a sudden burst of momentum — especially among young people — that Democrats desperately need.
Louis Staples
Contributor
Louis Staples is a freelance culture writer and critic based in London, UK. He writes “Cultural Staples” — a fortnightly culture essay at Bazaar.com. His work is featured in The Cut, The Guardian, Vogue, Rolling Stone, and Variety.
