Kamala Harris and her pervasive memes, explained

Kamala Harris smiling in from of a blue background with Kamala in white text

Harris' campaign has flipped some of the memes poking fun at her to its own benefit

(Image credit: Montinique Monroe / Stringer / Getty Images)

last updated 4 November 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris' digital campaign team has fully embraced the power of social media throughout her presidential campaign. Since Harris first announced her candidacy, her team has sought to take derisive memes mocking the Democratic nominee and flip them to her benefit.

Behind Harris' social media accounts is a team of Gen Zers whose objective was to "break through a challenging media environment to reach the voters who are most difficult to reach," and to meet them where they are, a campaign spokesperson said to Axios. Online memes supporting Harris have "taken on a life of their own" and been adopted by the campaign account @KamalaHQ, which has "more than tripled its following since the switch," the spokesperson added.

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The debate between Trump and Harris created an outpouring of memes, including a bunch mocking some of her opponent's more outlandish claims — but many of those about Harris were more flattering. What stuck out most this time was not anything Harris said, but rather her dramatic facial expressions as Trump attempted to defend his positions. "She knew exactly what she was doing," CBS News contributor Ed Gordon said of Harris' gestures and looks at the time. "She understood the split-screen."

A trend among Harris' supporters, dubbed the K-Hive, is the proliferation of coconut and palm tree emojis. The two emojis are plant-based teasers of her fans' support for her taking the helm on the Democratic ticket. The coconut trees refer to a speech the vice president gave last year, in which she quoted her mother talking about younger generations. "You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you," Harris said with her signature laugh.

The clip initially went viral, with some Republicans using it to deride her, inferring that she might be intoxicated. After Biden's disastrous debate performance in June, the clip took on a new light, as supporters claimed to be "coconut-pilled" and all-in on Harris replacing Biden. After he stepped down and endorsed Harris, other Democrats used the emojis to signal their advocacy for her nomination to the ticket. Unfortunately, it is also being used "as a racial slur by some detractors to mean someone who is "brown" on the outside and "white" on the inside," said CNN.

@flextillerson
♬ original sound - aly

Popular British pop singer Charli XCX led the charge into a "brat summer," and the Harris campaign got in on the fun. After news of Biden's endorsement spread, the singer signaled her support by declaring, "kamala IS brat" on X. Charli XCX's sixth studio album title, "the brat movement," and the album's signature chartreuse hue have taken over the summer. The meaning of "brat" is to be "that girl who is a little messy and likes to party … feels herself but maybe also has a breakdown … is very honest, very blunt, a little bit volatile," Charli said on TikTok. Remixes of Harris speaking and Charli's song "360" were being spread all over social media. Harris' campaign seemingly embraced the trend, even creating a header image for the new Kamala HQ X account in the album cover's style.

@vikstoks
♬ original sound - Vik

Another meme the Harris campaign embraces stems from the VP's apparent love of Venn diagrams. "I love Venn diagrams," Harris said during an event in 2022. "There's just something about those three circles and the analysis of where there's the intersection, right?" She is also apparently really fond of good news and yellow school buses. The Republican National Committee posted the Venn diagram clip on YouTube to criticize her, but "many of those commenting on the account's posts expressed their own love for the set theory tool that shows overlapping areas of similarity," The Associated Press said. KamalaHq posted its own Venn diagram on X, showing "holding Trump accountable" as the intersection of both the Biden and Harris campaigns.

While many memes are based on one-off statements, one became more of a catchphrase: the iconic "What can be unburdened by what has been?" She repeated the phrase frequently, and it was one of her go-tos during the 2020 presidential primary campaign and into the general election as Biden's running mate. A "Republican Party supercut" of all the times she used the phrase in speeches, interviews and appearances helped the phrase go viral again, Vox said. "Four straight minutes of 'what can be, unburdened by what has been.' It's incredible," one Republican staffer said as he shared the clip after the first presidential debate this year.

One of the OG Harris memes comes from a memorable quote from a viral video of her ringing President Joe Biden following their victory in the 2020 Presidential election. On November 7th, 2020, Harris tweeted a video of herself speaking on the phone and saying, "We did it, Joe." The post received more than 44 million views, 3.3 million likes, and 765,000 retweets in less than one week, according to Know Your Meme. Parodies and lip-sync dubs spread on TikTok and Twitter in 2020.

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Theara Coleman has worked as a staff writer at The Week since September 2022. She frequently writes about technology, education, literature and general news. She was previously a contributing writer and assistant editor at Honeysuckle Magazine, where she covered racial politics and cannabis industry news.