Kamala Harris’s honeymoon: What reignited drama in US presidential race

Contents

• Kamala Harris' active start - memes and money
• High ratings in the US and problems in specific states
• Winning young people's favor is a sophisticated task
• Trump team's response

There are less than a hundred days left before the US presidential election. However, the long-prepared strategies of the candidates from the two main parties have undergone significant changes, and are in an emergency mode. For the Democrats, it was due to the replacement of their candidate. Kamala Harris surprised everyone with her activity from the first day of her new status. And the Republicans had to react to it urgently.

Kamala Harris' active start - memes and money

In recent weeks, the American blogosphere has been in a real "Kamala-mania". On the day it became known that Harris was running for president of the United States, an old episode of The Simpsons cartoon series was shared, where the character ran for president in the same clothes that the politician once wore.

Along with Google queries about Kamala Harris, another meme, the "coconut tree," has become widespread. The association with the coconut comes from a viral video in which Harris recalls how her mother once asked her: "You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?"

This now viral quote generated a massive wave of online content. Many social media users, especially young people, refer to it in their posts to describe themselves as "coconuts" or post coconut emojis.

TikTok users repost mixed videos of Harris speaking to the music of cult artists thousands of times. And the artists themselves express their support for her.

Rapper Megan Thee Stallion performed at the first campaign rally in Atlanta, coining the slogan "Hotties for Harris". Other supporters included rapper Quavo and pop singer Olivia Rodrigo. Beyoncé allowed Kamala Harris to use her hit Freedom as the official song of the election campaign. And singer Charli XCX called Kamala a "brat," which instantly stuck with Harris. According to Charli XCX, "brat" is an image of a slightly messy girl who likes to party and maybe sometimes says something stupid.

One of the memes about Kamala Harris (photo: Instagram)

Thanks to all this, Kamala Harris has dramatically increased her presence on social media.

From June 1 to July 20, she was mentioned on social network X on average less than 74 thousand times a day. But as soon as Biden stepped aside, the number of posts increased to more than 1.7 million per day between July 21 and July 31. Her followers tripled, from about 400,000 the week before Biden's withdrawal to more than 1.2 million as of August 7.

This is more than Biden had, and even Trump with his 1.4 million mentions per day. This is an impressive achievement, given that Harris' opponent has long been one of the hottest topics of discussion in X, thanks to his high-profile statements.

Against this backdrop, there has been a slight increase in Harris's ratings nationally. According to an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll conducted on August 1-4, Harris has the support of 51% of voters, while Trump has 48% (margin of error is 3%).

But how long can Kamala Harris' "honeymoon" with voters last and, most importantly, will memes help her win the presidency?

High ratings in the US and problems in specific states

National ratings in the US are important, at least to attract the attention of sponsors. But they are not decisive. Due to the peculiarities of the electoral system, the main thing is to win a certain number of states to gain a majority of electors. In most states, the winner gets all the electoral votes. Because of this, not the candidate who received the majority of votes in absolute numbers may win in the United States.

The media attention to Harris helped her to quickly raise a record amount of donations - 310 million in July, which is twice as much as Trump. Otherwise, there are difficulties.

"It's a media honeymoon because when it comes to key states, things are not going so well for Kamala Harris. The issue is that she still cannot attract the most important categories of the population for her - white uneducated men and Hispanic Americans. These are the key categories that still support Donald Trump," Maksym Skrypchenko, president of the Center for Transatlantic Dialogue, tells RBC-Ukraine.

The vice presidential candidate may help to partially solve this problem. For this position, Harris's team chose not the most obvious candidate - Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota. Read about his views and attitude toward Ukraine in RBC-Ukraine's article.

Walz will somewhat balance Kamala Harris's image, as not all Democratic supporters are ready to vote for a non-white female candidate.

On the one hand, he has strong ties to the Democratic Party establishment, so he can count on the support of their sponsors. On the other hand, as governor, Walz legalized marijuana and abortion in Minnesota and supported LGBT people in legislation, so he is not opposed by the extreme left wing of the party.

Walls comes from a simple family, having worked his way up from the military, then school teacher and coach to congressman and governor. Therefore, Harris' team can present him as a "defender of the working class," as opposed to a similar figure on Donald Trump's team, J.D. Vance.

At the same time, according to polls, more than 70% of Americans do not yet know who Tim Walls is. Therefore, additional time and money are needed to promote him.

Winning young people's favor is a sophisticated task

The Democrats have another way to defeat Trump: engaging young people. And this is where the aforementioned memes and celebrity endorsements work best.

The content of the memes is now secondary, based on the principle that the main thing is to spell the name correctly. It is much more important that they raise Kamala Harris' awareness among young people.

"It's a matter of how the company can use them successfully. Kamala is targeting a younger audience. That is, young people with broad views who support the legalization of LGBT marriages, that is, a left-liberal bias. That's why all these memes are aimed at a young audience, and it works well. But the question is whether young people will come to the polls because traditionally they rarely go to the polls," says Maksym Skrypchenko.

One of the "coconut tree" videos

Kamala Harris has another problem with young people - oddly enough, a foreign policy one. Although with some nuances, Biden's team still supports Israel in its actions against Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists.

At the same time, a significant number of young people in large cities hold left-liberal views and sympathize with the Palestinians. They are driven by emotion, not understanding the complexities of Middle East politics. The pro-Palestinian protests at universities that have swept across the United States are indicative in this regard.

A separate problem is the swing state of Michigan, where Americans of Arab descent play an important role and can tip the scales in both directions.

According to Skrypchenko, at the national level, this creates a risk that left-liberal youth will simply not come to vote, despite the swearing under the memes. Especially if a major war breaks out between Israel, Iran, and its allies, and the United States cannot stay away.

For now, Harris is trying to sit on two chairs and draw attention to human rights violations in the Gaza Strip. However, the United States does not always know whether they are real or falsified by Hamas.

During Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent visit to the United States, Harris expressed grave concern about the Gaza Strip.

"Israel has a right to defend itself and how it does so matters. What has happened in Gaza over the last nine months is devastating," Harris said on July 26.

But no matter how hard the Democrats try to maneuver, it's all about more or less damage to the campaign.

"The problem with Harris is that she is the current vice president, so she influences the position of the United States, so everything that is happening in the Middle East is a consequence of her work. Whether she is involved or not, everything will be blamed on her," Skrypchenko tells RBC-Ukraine.

Another interesting point is related to this area: the choice of a vice presidential candidate. In the American media, the name of the more prominent Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro was mentioned. However, his candidacy was seriously opposed by the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party, which is pro-Palestinian, because Shapiro is a practicing Jew who fully supports Israel in its fight against terrorists.

Donald Trump and Adin Ross (photo: Ross's stream on the Kick platform)

In turn, Trump also pays attention to the young audience, although they are not his main voters. The former president's TikTok account has 9.7 million subscribers. And the other day, he visited the streamer Adin Ross, who has a total audience of about 13 million viewers, to the track "Many Men" by rapper 50 Cent.

Trump team's response

The Trump team's first reaction to Kamala Harris's nomination was confusing.

Perhaps the most scandalous was the story of Trump's doubts about Harris's identity. During a conversation with the National Association of Black Journalists, Trump said that his rival had previously claimed to be a woman of Indian descent. The host who interviewed Trump denied this and noted that Harris had always identified herself as a black American. Harris's father was born in Jamaica and her mother in India, while Kamala herself was born in America.

"The Republicans were confused. At first, they began to equate Biden and Harris. They said that they were two of a kind. That is, she is already the current vice president and is responsible for all the mistakes of the administration. But there were no specific things to cling to. All these unsuccessful jabs by Trump are evidence of a lack of strategy," Skrypchenko says.

According to the expert, one of the main areas of attack on Harris will continue to be her failures in the current president's team.

"They have ordered a lot of targeted advertising with all its failures and continue associating Harris with all the administration's foreign and domestic policy failures. They are also constantly trying to emphasize that she has no foreign policy experience, no broad understanding of the situation, and cannot make decisions on her own," the expert says.

In general, election campaigns are a very flexible process. The teams of both candidates will be constantly looking for different approaches, including through focus groups and polls, and will find the message that has the greatest impact on voters.

"For example, Trump's team is running ads to some voters in conservative states saying that Harris is in favor of a broad right to abortion. And in this part of the conservative states, they don't like it," Skrypchenko says.

In the end, the potential of the attempted assassination of Trump has not been fully utilized. As long as the investigation continues and news comes from the commission that is handling it, Trump's team will be able to use the assassination attempt theme.

However, the main battles of the presidential campaign are still ahead - traditionally, in the United States, it gains its final momentum in early fall.

Sources: opinion polls, social media materials, American politicians, and comments by Maksym Skrypchenko, President of the Center for Transatlantic Dialogue.