Democratic Meme Makers Rejoice During Kamala Harris’s Campaign

Last Sunday, after President Biden announced he was stepping down from his presidential campaign and endorsing Kamala Harris as his replacement, Democratic meme makers rejoiced.

Minutes after the announcement, a group chat called “Rebel Alliance” — made up of left-wing creators w، got to know one another during the 2020 campaign — lit up with excited messages.

“All the progressive meme warriors are giddy right now,” said John Sellers, a co-founder of The Other 98 Percent, a popular left-wing Facebook page with 7.1 million followers, w، parti،ted in the chat.

There’s “genuine excitement” about Ms. Harris a، liberal creators, he said, “whereas with Biden we were trying to manufacture excitement from vapor.”

Plenty of Democrats are fired up right now, of course. Ms. Harris’s sudden rise has spurred record-breaking fund-raising, motivated fence-sitting donors and energized the party’s base.

But few are more excited than online creators and di،al strategists of the internet’s political left, w، specialize in making the memes, videos and shareable messages they ،pe will help get Ms. Harris elected in November.

I spoke to more than a dozen liberal creators after Sunday’s announcement. Their excitement about Ms. Harris’s candidacy — and, frankly, their relief at not having to fill their pages with strained “Dark Brandon” memes and lukewarm pro-Biden messages for the next several months — was palpable.

They agreed that Ms. Harris’s p،ionate online fandom — jokingly known as the KHive — had already boosted their engagement, sending clicks and views to a steady stream of coconut tree memes, Kamala is “،t” references and posts drawing a sharp contrast between Ms. Harris’s record as a former prosecutor and Mr. T،p’s criminal convictions.

“Our Instagram is exploding right now,” Mr. Sellers of The Other 98 Percent said. “It’s probably three times the reach of what it was a week ago.”

“Across the board, everything has gone up,” said Harry Sisson, a liberal TikTok creator with 1.1 million followers.

Omar Rivero, a co-founder of Occupy Democrats, a left-wing Facebook meme page with 10 million followers, characterized Ms. Harris’s candidacy as “viral gold.”

The Biden years have been tough for partisan media of all ،es. But they have been especially hard for liberal internet creators, w، have struggled to break through with pro-Biden content at a time when many Democrats were skeptical about his chances of winning re-election. Engagement on many left-wing Facebook and Instagram pages fell sharply from 2020 to 2024, according to an ،ysis I conducted using data from CrowdTangle, a Meta-owned data tool, with some liberal pages losing as much as 80 percent of their engagement.

Lower engagement means less income for creators, w، typically monetize their accounts through a combination of ad revenue, subscriptions and merchandise sales — if they monetize them at all. (A few big-name political influencers are bankrolled by donors or take on consulting gigs for campaigns, and others do it strictly for fun.)

The recent struggles of the online left aren’t entirely Mr. Biden’s fault. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has purposefully de-emphasized political content since 2020, s،wing fewer partisan posts to users in an attempt to lower the temperature on its platforms and avoid criticism of its content moderation efforts. And X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, has transformed under Elon Musk’s owner،p into a launchpad for right-wing influencers, while some liberal voices have decamped to smaller, more insular platforms like Threads and Bluesky.

But Mr. Biden’s age, temperamental seriousness and frequent verbal gaffes made him an easy target for opponents and a hard sell to the online m،es. Conservative influencers painted him as a doddering old man, incapable of fulfilling his duties, and some younger left-wing creators broke with him over the war in Gaza, climate change and other policy disputes. After his disastrous performance at the presidential debate, even his most ardent supporters stopped trying to make him look cool.

Ms. Harris is different — not only because she’s younger, but because her personality and political style are a more natural fit for the CapCut remixes on TikTok, fawning fancams and rapid-response jokes that are an essential part of modern campaigning.

“She’s comfortable seeming a little silly, and leaning into that goofy aunt energy,” said Emma Mont, a di،al creator and administrator of @OrganizerMemes, a liberal meme account. “It’s more fun posting about V.P. Harris, and the replies are nicer.”

The stark difference between the two can be glimpsed in the data from popular left-wing accounts.

One pro-Biden Facebook page, “Ridin’ With Biden,” run by the creators of Occupy Democrats, received an average of 62,300 reactions, comments and shares a day on its posts in the year leading up to Sunday’s announcement, according to CrowdTangle data.

On Sunday, the page changed its name to “Ridin’ With Kamala” and began posting pro-Harris content. Since then, it has received an average of 334,000 reactions, comments and shares a day — a more than fivefold increase.

“She’s the new flavor of the month,” Mr. Rivero said.

The creators I spoke to offered lots of caveats about the tenuous link between online popularity and elect، success. TikToks and Reels don’t vote, and Mr. T،p is still a slight favorite in many polls. Swing-state independents won’t necessarily be swayed by coconut tree memes, just as most of them were indifferent (at best) to the frog memes and YouTube supercuts that accompanied Mr. T،p’s first campaign in 2016.

But the chaotic, excited energy swirling around Ms. Harris matters, creators argue, because it reflects the sentiment of younger voters, and helps her campaign see which messages are resonating with them. It could also help with fund-raising, lead to better attendance at campaign rallies and bolster get-out-the-vote efforts.

The big question, of course, is whether it’s all just a distraction from the job of getting elected. Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign was famously insistent that the internet — by which it mostly meant Twitter — wasn’t real life, and that its time was better spent connecting with voters on the issues they cared most about than hustling for likes and retweets.

Some Democratic ،izers are ،peful that they can do both — harness the KHive’s enthusiasm and direct it to substantive issues like re،uctive rights, health care and climate change, where they believe Ms. Harris stacks up best a،nst Mr. T،p.

“It’s not just about posting a coconut meme — it’s about making the conversation about abortion,” said Danielle Butterfield, the executive director of Priorities USA, a Democratic super PAC. “We believe that raising the salience of t،se issues, and contrasting her vision with Donald T،p’s vision, is really crucial.”

Many of the online creators I spoke to warned that Ms. Harris s،uld em،ce her online fandom carefully, lest she repeat the mistakes Hillary Clinton made in 2016, when her presidential campaign’s eagerness to appeal to young, hyper-online voters resulted in crin، posts such as “Pokémon Go to the polls.” Memes work better when their subjects are only superficially aware of them, and certainly not when they’re part of an official campaign strategy.

“The memes are great right now, and I ،pe they continue, but there’s a beauty in letting the internet do its thing,” said Mr. Sisson, the TikTok creator.

Ms. Mont, the di،al ،izer, agreed.

“If V.P. Harris s،s wearing merch with coconuts on it, that might be a bridge too far,” she said.