Dark Brandon Never Had the Meme Capital Kamala Harris Does Right Now
Reading Time: 2 minutesKamala’s brat summer is here., Kamala Harris presidential campaign memes: Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, coconut tree.
After President Joe Biden soiled his own chances of getting reelected by appearing utterly incoherent and mumbly and decrepit at his much-hyped debate with his eternal rival, former President Donald Trump, panic set in. Democratic voters—and those petrified of a second Trump presidency—began sweating.
Biden’s all-too-cool internet persona, Dark Brandon—a laser-eyed golem tossed onto the internet by a cadre of politicos desperate to keep the president politically relevant on the Gen Z–powered web—was dead. RIP Dark Brandon. Enter the brat-ified Kamala Harris: the ‘von dutch brat coconut tree edit featuring kamala harris,’ dropped on X, auguring a vibe shift of extraordinary scale.
In the hours after Biden announced he’d be dropping out of the presidential race, endorsing Harris in his place, the vibes of the political internet, which had oscillated between terrifying and depressing, conspicuously shifted. A candidate who wasn’t named Biden or Trump was on the scene and ready to intake the pent-up nervous energy of the internet.
Harris videos resurfaced and turned into catchphrases—disaggregated from their original meaning and compiled into new edited mashups, the stuff that memes are made of. If you’re oblivious to what I’m talking about, then you might have just fallen out of the metaphorical coconut tree.
But try to keep up: It’s not too late to exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you. There’s still time to embrace what can be, and become unburdened by what has been. There are Venn diagrams, Veep clips, horny copypasta texts, references to a (what?) ‘femininomenon,’ and an infusion of Charli XCX electropop tracks—all meant to boost Kamala Harris to the presidency.
Of course, these memes have very little to do with Vice President Harris, what her presidency would entail, how she would take on Trump, or what policies she would champion. They invoke a real version of Harris that is wacky only by the standards of a try-hard and slightly robotic politician, laughing mid-sentence, and sharing her constant Selina Meyer–like observations about the world—or kitchen tips (‘Kosher salt, fresh ground pepper, chop up a little thyme’)—behind an all-too-wide smile. They exist in conversation with variants too, including a separate, ironically embraced cop persona responsive to her tough-on-crime prosecutorial history. Kamala Harris is a politician, but in this age, politicians become the memes we create about them.
That’s true even if the memes aren’t really about Harris after all. They’re vessels for the chaotic energy of voters and internet users everywhere who are upset at the prior two options for president, hungry for some way to comment on the state of the country, and emotionally spent by the politics of our time. Who among us isn’t exhausted? Who among us wouldn’t like a fun-loving Momala to meme into political apotheosis?
Harris’ newly born campaign understands this, it seems. The BidenHQ account became the KamalaHQ account on X, replete with a Brat header image and a Venn diagram meme. The political campaign is still in swing-state diners, VFW halls, and rallies across the country. But it’s also on TikTok and Instagram and X and wherever the fun-loving, never-too-serious-and-yet-so-serious population of the internet lives. And right now, the presidential meme campaign is a one-woman race.
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