What a difference a week makes.
An ascendant Vice President Kamala Harris, backed by a wave of memes and coconut-tree-meets-Charli XCX videos, and a wounded JD Vance, hounded by his past comments about women and targeted with lewd jokes, have in a matter of days flipped the emerging online election narrative established by former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden.
This week, the names of Biden and Trump could hardly be found amid a flurry of discussion across X, TikTok and most anywhere else the internet discusses politics.
“It is a reverse of what I saw in 2016, when it felt like Trump had just taken over the internet,” Melissa Ryan, who runs consulting firm CARD Strategies and previously worked in digital strategy for Democratic campaigns and progressive causes, told NBC News. “Internet culture has been driving it, but I’ve seen women of all ages sharing coconut memes.”
Matt Gorman, a political analyst and executive vice president at digital marketing firm Targeted Victory who has advised Republican presidential candidates and members of Congress, said both campaigns have been marked by online enthusiasm in recent weeks, with a sharp uptick on the left now that the conversation has moved on from whether Biden should step aside.
But he was doubtful that the current online narratives will have an outsize impact on polling or the election itself.
“Understandably so, there’s been a lot more enthusiasm on the left, because they’re reverting to where they should have been at this point. It’s almost like a catharsis, all this energy around her,” Gorman said. “Both JD and Kamala, there’s been a lot of online chatter, a lot of online support and hate, but the fundamentals are the fundamentals.”
It’s difficult to recall such a dramatic shift in digital fortunes.
Last week, the Democrats were downtrodden. Memes and influencers valorizing Trump in the wake of an assassination attempt were inescapable, with even more questioning Biden’s health and electoral chances. Coming off a raucous Republican National Convention, Trump’s selection of Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, as his running mate further cemented his support among many influential technorati. Elon Musk said he was backing Trump and was reportedly readying significant financial support.
The momentum began to change when Biden said Sunday he wouldn’t pursue re-election, and Democrats quickly fell in line behind Harris.
By Monday morning, parts of the internet that had been reluctant to wade into the election discourse or endorse a candidate outright suddenly rallied behind her, fitting Harris into viral memes and making new meme formats to support her, from her “coconut tree” sound bite to pop star Charli XCX’s “Brat.” Others would later start a tongue-in-cheek joke format in which Harris made niche campaign promises like bringing back Miller Lite Vortex beer bottles.
The pro-Harris memes were popular in progressive corners of the internet, while broader swaths of voters broke fundraising records for her, raising $81 million in the first 24 hours of her official campaign.
Matt Ortega, a creative strategist who runs E23 Digital and has worked with Democratic campaigns for 15 years, said the joy and emotions around Harris’ campaign are reminiscent of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign.
“A lot of the videos that have gone around, the video of her and her sister talking about when she was elected attorney general and they just started laughing, you can see the joy,” Ortega said, referencing a viral video of Harris. “Donald Trump’s shtick isn’t as funny to people as it used to be.”
Vance, by comparison, has become the new favorite punching bag of the very online left.
During the second week of his candidacy, he has been the subject of viral misinformation and memes, particularly a made-up story about a nonexistent passage in his book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” detailing sexual relations with a couch. But what appeared to start as a joke caught fire online and spurred no shortage of fact checks (which clarified no such act ever appeared in his book) and eventually found its way to late night TV. The Associated Press published and then deleted a fact-check post about the couch meme, inspiring even more attention, and it continued to gain traction throughout the week.
The jokes have been vicious enough to push even some Democrats to pause, though they said to expect little mercy from those on the left.
“The glee with which people have gone after Vance with couch memes, as someone who works on disinformation, makes me a little uneasy,” Ryan said. “Folks are going after him with everything they have, and it plays into this notion that this man and his ideology are weird.”
But he has also faced more substantive criticism this week for past comments deriding people without children. In a resurfaced 2021 interview, Vance said the U.S. was being run by a “bunch of childless cat ladies,” referencing Harris specifically. His 2021 comments echo a line of gendered attacks Harris has faced from the right, including that she isn’t a mother, despite having two stepchildren with husband Doug Emhoff. Harris’ stepdaughter Ella and Emoff’s ex-wife Kerstin both responded, defending Harris’ parenting.
Vance’s comments struck a nerve both inside and outside of his party. Republican Meghan McCain spoke out against them multiple times, posting on X on Thursday that Vance’s comments “are activating women across all sides, including my most conservative Trump supporting friends.” “Friends” star Jennifer Aniston wrote in an Instagram story Wednesday that “I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States.”
Still, Vance doubled down on his comments in an interview with Megyn Kelly on Friday, saying the “substance” of what he said is “true.”
Whether the social media vibe shift will show up in the polls remains an open question. Harris has closed some gaps with Trump as compared to Biden.
A Thursday New York Times/Siena College poll found Trump ahead of Harris by 1 point, and her favorability rating higher than Biden’s. NBC News’ latest national poll, conducted after Biden and Trump’s debate but before the assassination attempt on Trump, found Harris 2 points behind Trump. Biden was also measured 2 points behind Trump in the poll.
,
