Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign has deployed a massive digital operation, with over 175 staffers dedicated to flooding social media with pro-Harris, anti-Trump content.
What Axios referred to as her Gen Z “mobilization team” is at the heart of a strategy that prioritizes memes, online taunts, and TikTok trends over traditional political campaigning. Despite the aggressive tactics, Donald Trump has over twice as many TikTok followers as Harris and almost five times as many X (formerly Twitter) followers.
The Harris campaign’s focus on rapid response and real-time content creation has often allowed it to dominate fleeting, hyper-online conversations. But her reliance on inexperienced, “vibes-focused” staffers has also led to some embarrassment, with her latest video about making an incorrect collard greens recipe in her bathtub attracting a social media “ratio.”
The secret ingredient for my greens? Tabasco. pic.twitter.com/zsooG51YaW
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) September 1, 2024
“From palm trees and coconut emojis to Charlie XCX’s ‘brat’ endorsement, online memes supporting Vice President Harris have taken on a life of their own and have been adopted – with a wink and a nod – by our campaign account @KamalaHQ, which has more than tripled its following since the switch,” a campaign spokesman told Axios.
But much like her in-person campaign activities, the digital domination appears to have waned since the Democratic National Convention, with many tiring of the “sneering” schtick.
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