The Unbearable Lightness of Kamala Mania

The youthful energy behind the Harris Campaign is threatening the Democratic Party establishment with a good time.

Regardless of the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, we cannot deny that Kamala Harris has made politics fun again.  From the coconut emojis to Fox News being forced to decode the meaning of Brat Summer to the tarring of the Republicans with the label of “weird,” youthful energy has jolted the Harris campaign into a dynamic start with the election less than 100 days away.  The consequences of this election are no less monumental than when Joe Biden was at the top of the ticket.  But gone is the relentless, humorless drumbeat of DNC doom, predicting the end of democracy and civilization unless we chip in another $15 (we are not mad, just disappointed read one text I received soliciting donations), give our friends and neighbors homework (Read Project 2025!!!), and practice daily self-deception in affirming that our frail octogenarian President is the only human being on earth capable of stopping Donald Trump.  After almost a decade of Democratic messaging drenched in fear and guilt, the light-hearted exuberance around the Kamala campaign feels like a welcome sigh of comic relief.

With spirits high, it was only a matter of time before the supposed political experts started to pour cold water on the playful vibe shift they never saw coming.  One of the more clueless attacks comes from the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s article Democrats Could Regret Calling Trump and His Supporters ‘Weird.’  Friedman claims that labeling MAGA politicians as “weird’ will reinforce the reputation of Democrats as smug elitists looking down on the working-class men and women whose votes the party desperately needs. Friedman's argument hinges on the very out-of-touch and unintentionally elitist assumption that labeling J.D. Vance’s Cat-Lady rants and Trump’s Hannibal Lecter obsession as “weird” will somehow register as an attack on normal blue-collar Americans. If anything, directing the “weird” label toward the top of the MAGA hierarchy marks a much overdue change in tone from a Democratic Party that too often blamed their electoral failings on the cultural deficiencies of voters e.g. Obama’s claim that rural voters “cling to guns or religion” and Hillary Clinton lumping tens of millions of Republican voters into “a basket of deplorables.”   By labeling Trump and Vance as weird, the Democrats are finally using plain language to highlight the fact that the MAGA inner circle is disturbingly different from the average American voter they claim to represent.  

Friedman fails to understand that at its core the weirdness label is a tool of populist politics, not elitism. Calling someone weird can be justifiably seen as immature, shallow, and low-brow.  I doubt it is a coincidence that the schoolyard taunt of calling Trump and Vance weirdos started with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a former high school geography teacher.  Walz knows that even when the weird label comes from the cool kids at the top of the pecking order it is always a populist rather than an elitist attack.  Those who employ this strategy need at least the implicit buy-in of the majority to "other" someone as weird.  Right-wing populists have used this weirdness strategy to their benefit for almost a decade, seeking to gain the support of average Americans by pointing out the habits of liberal elites the rest of the country might find bizarre (e.g. including pronouns in signature lines, land acknowledgment statements, Drag Queen story time, etc.).  But even if it isn’t elitist for Democrats to turn this strategy against MAGA isn’t it at least hypocritical?  Maybe.  But it is still fun, and if the Republicans' childish I’m not weird you’re weird responses are any indication, the attack has worked just as Walz's schoolyard strategy intended.  

While Friedman is concerned about the meanness of the weird label, other killjoys have warned that chronically online fun creates an echo chamber of irrational exuberance for Kamala reminiscent of the Hillary Clinton campaign’s 2016 debacle.  In his essay Democrats Think Their Candidate is Running for President of Online Again cultural critic Freddie deBoer warns, “If Harris is going to win, the absolute last thing she should do is to run a meme candidacy like that presided over by Robbie Mook in 2016, where Hillary’s agenda took a back seat to a never-ending procession of glamorous celebrity photo ops and a wince-inducing attempt to make the candidate into America's cool grandma.”  DeBoer fails to realize that in our age of authenticity, the source of a message is just as important as its substance.  In the case of Kamala's campaign, the source of her trending content could not have come from a more different source than the top-down, rigidly hierarchical messaging created by Clinton’s 2016 team.  Kooky coconut memes and Kamala-themed TikToks were being made long before Kamala’s presidential campaign began. These memes and emojis were spontaneously goofy acts of rebellion by youth who felt disenchanted by the prospect of voting for an 81-year-old to save democracy and wanted someone younger and more relatable at the top of the ticket.  While Hillary aggressively courted stars from Hollywood and the recording industry for decades, Kamala’s most prominent pop supporter came from British singer Charli XCX who proclaimed “Kamala is Brat” just hours after Joe Biden dropped out of the race.  Unless high-level backchannel negotiations were going on between Kamala loyalists and Charlie XCX while Biden was still clinging to power, the only assumption we can make is that this was an organic spontaneous endorsement based on Kamala’s vibes matching the carefree, erratic energy of Charli’s “Brat Summer” trend.  This was not some highly contrived celebrity shout-out like we would have expected from the 2016 Hillary campaign. Hillary's celeb-fueled strategy failed not because it was too much fun, but because it was an obvious artifice employed to boost the likability of a candidate that most Americans recognized as an ambitious, humorless scold.

Even if we assume that the fun of the Kamala campaign is organic and authentic compared to the manufactured content of the Hillary Clinton campaign, won’t average Americans still be turned off by this juvenile nonsense?  Like Friedman, deBoer assumes these good vibes will annoy working-class voters and “retirees in Wisconsin and Arizona."  Shouldn’t we have somber messaging to match the bleak reality of America’s swiftly dying middle class?  No, what these critics of carefree Kamala Mania fail to realize is that the “fun gap” has been an uncontested strategic advantage of the Republican Party during the Trump Era.  While liberals recoil at Trump rallies as a grotesque orgy of racism, sexism, and lies, the undeniable fact is those in attendance seem to be having a great time.  Fun, like all forms of human energy, can be channeled toward political ends. The fact that many Kamala supporters are having a good time does not preclude the campaign from putting out serious messaging about topics like election security, reproductive freedom, or climate change.  But fun is infectious, and swing state voters may be drawn to the positive energy of young Kamala supporters even if they do not scroll TikTok, drop coconut emojis in the chat, or listen to Charli XCX.  The fact that Friedman and deBoer think fun needs to be suppressed to make Democrats more relatable to average Americans shows how detached the coastal elite commentariat is from the basic humanity of swing voters who also happen to be people with a full range of emotions, including a desire for fun.

Fun and humor can be subversive, especially in a party whose messaging has been dominated by fear and guilt for so long.  Maybe that is why these killjoys are eager to return control of Kamala’s campaign to the adults in the room and get back to the Democratic Party politics as usual that they understand.  But this call for maturity fails to realize that much of the youthful excitement around Kamala is attributable to her campaign’s early success proving how wrong the Democratic Party adults in the room have been over the past few months.  The adults in the room told us that Joe Biden was still as sharp as ever and that only he could defeat the authoritarian menace of MAGA.  They were wrong.  The adults in the room told us that Kamala was not presidential material and that Trump’s lead in the polls would grow if she became the presidential nominee.  They were wrong.  If the adults in the room could be so wrong about the need to cling to a declining octogenarian in a presidential election, what else could they be wrong about?  Could they be wrong about the infeasibility of Medicare For All or the impracticality of The Green New Deal?  Could they be wrong about the impossibility of a just and humane end to the suffering in Gaza? Do the old Bernie Bros rooting for their former enemy Kamala expect her to implement a dazzling progressive platform?  Doubtful.  She has already backed away from Medicare for All and a fracking ban, among other progressive policies that were part of her platform during the 2020 Democratic Primary.  Still, the fact that so many from the disenchanted left have integrated themselves into Kamala Mania suggests that there is so much more going on here than just memes, emojis, and name-calling.  It is the feeling that maybe those who ran the party through guilt and fear over the past decade could be losing their grip on power. It is a hope that maybe our horizons of political possibility are broadening.

The one thing Friedman and deBoer get right is their warning to the Kamala campaign to refrain from putting too much faith in the long-term viability of riding this wave of fun.  Memes die, vibes shift and good times come to an end.  Even over the past week, the momentum of Kamala’s coming out party seems to be fading.  Often the good times cannot last unless someone new shows up or something exciting happens as the party's energy is winding down.  In the case of the Kamala campaign, the big question is who will stride through the door as her official nominee for Vice President.  The fun may bump up a few more notches if Harris chooses the man who started the anti-weirdo campaign in the first place, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.  Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear also seems capable of keeping the good times rolling, as proven by his frequent “he ain’t from here” jabs leveled at pseudo-hillbilly J.D. Vance.  We will know the adults in the room are finally back in charge and the fun times are over if Harris picks Josh Shapiro, Pete Buttigieg, or Mark Kelly for VP.  Shapiro and Buttigieg are brilliant and perfectly composed political operators, but their attempts at humor often come across as robotic and rehearsed as their Obama-inflected speaking voices.  And while it’s pretty cool that Kelly is an astronaut, he is a stern guy and far from the life of the party.  Shapiro, Buttigieg, and Kelly also hail from the corporate-friendly wing of the Democratic Party, sure to kill the good vibes being felt by progressive voters suddenly enamored with the Kamala campaign.  

Only time will tell how long this era of goofy good feelings around the Harris campaign will last.  But when it’s over and the Democratic Party establishment has regained its grip on power I will have no problem looking back and admitting, “It was fun while it lasted.”