“Kamala is a Brat,” singer Charli XCX tweeted on Sunday after Vice President Kamala Harris was sworn in to fill President Joe Biden’s vacant presidential seat. Though Charli XCX herself is a senior at 31, she speaks in a slang that’s easily recognizable to anyone under 30, especially women and gays. Brat is the album of the summer, its distinctive neon-green cover packed with references to Dimes Square’s provocative podcaster Julia Fox, partying, and the inherent feminine insecurity that comes with being, somehow, simultaneously in your late 20s and childless.
Harris’ team enthusiastically transformed what they believed was a pop star endorsement into a branding strategy. X-account “Kamala HQ” (1.1 million followers) adopted the distinctive colors, fonts, and lowercase style of Charli XCX’s prank and created its own banner image reading “kamala hq.” Meanwhile, gay men in New York City, upon hearing the news of Biden’s withdrawal in their natural habitat (Fire Island), quickly made the exact same prank-style crop tops. A mash-up of one of Harris’ most embarrassing lines, an anecdote about a coconut tree, was set to the Charli XCX song “Von Dutch,” which has been viewed more than 4 million times.
“The Internet is going crazy about Harris’ campaign,” proclaims gender and politics website The 19th. Harris’ “meme stock is bullish,” CNN adds. CNN devoted a panel to the subject, with suited-up baby boomers clumsily trying to explain the craze. “Is Kamala Harris a ‘brat?'” an economist asks, calling 2024 “America’s TikTok election.” “Young celebrities are trying to support Harris by associating her with their own viral, loyal social media brands,” explains the Associated Press rather soberly.
“The brat is supposed to exude the ineffable charm of a famous-but-not-a-top-class woman,” Shirley Lee wrote, treating the phenomenon with typical Atlantic overly rationalistic treatment. “The brat is a classic feminine archetype, along with the tomboy, the crone, the slut and the career woman,” wrote the Free Press’s Kat Rosenfield. “The brat is Cinderella’s stepsister, lacking both the social skills and a proper sense of gratitude for the privileges they enjoy.”
But what the hungry internet, filled with writers looking for stories, and the Harris campaign miss is that being “sassy” isn’t actually a compliment.
A “brat,” as Charli XCX describes it herself, is someone who walks around wearing “a pack of cigarettes, a Bic lighter, a white strappy top with no bra,” and a girl who “feels like herself, but maybe she’s mentally drained, but she gets over it and parties, and is very honest, very forthright, a little quirky, and does stupid things.”
For the media to run a story about Harris dominating the young vote simply because of a (possibly trolled) tweet from Charlie XCX reveals the parties’ hunger for an Obama 2.0 campaign and for Harris to be a Bernie Sanders-esque inspirational figure, and perhaps more importantly, it contradicts the polls.
CNN polling analyst Harry Enten points out that Harris is “performing worse against Trump than Biden did in 2020” among younger voters overall, a finding backed up by a Quinnipiac University poll conducted July 19-21. “Moreover, Biden’s withdrawal has not made young Democrats more disproportionately motivated to vote than other Democrats,” Enten notes. Recent New York Times/Siena College polling data complicates this story a bit, concluding that “Harris is performing better among younger (18-29) and Hispanic voters than Biden has in any survey this year,” which may not mean much. Biden has notoriously performed poorly among these groups, so a slight improvement is good for Democrats, but probably not a game-changer. (“On the contrary, [Harris] “Biden has received poor ratings among white working-class voters and those over 65 in all but one of the previous Times/Siena polls,” the same article noted.
Perhaps more importantly, the young vote doesn’t really matter this time. The young vote is certainly nice, but Harris needs to win Pennsylvania. Harris needs to win Arizona. Harris needs to win Michigan. Harris needs to win Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina. If Harris can drum up support from young voters in these states and have a meaningful impact on youth turnout, that will help. If not, the “Von Dutch” meme means nothing.
“Young voters still have largely negative feelings about politics and voting, but hope has risen since June,” Change Research said in a report released Wednesday. The report found that young people are indeed excited about Harris and are more likely to vote as a result. But still, “the top emotions related to voting are all negative: in an all-choice question, 53% chose ‘anxiety,’ 43% ‘fear,’ 38% ‘overwhelmed,’ and 37% ‘anger.’ However, following Biden’s withdrawal and Harris’ entry into the race, hope has risen from 23% to 30%.”
Kamala is not a sassy woman. She is perceived as a mediocre candidate, a weird wine lady who says quirky things, taking advantage of a moment of virality in a dark political climate where young voters are realizing that politicians are not delivering on their promises.
New York City: The Department of Health is trying to turn New Yorkers into informants.
Quick Hit
“California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order Thursday directing state agencies on how to remove homeless encampments, a month after a Supreme Court ruling allowing cities to ban camps in public places,” reports the Associated Press. Leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel have been arrested by U.S. authorities. First ladies Barack and Michelle Obama endorsed Kamala Harris for president in a somewhat embarrassing call that was released by Harris’ campaign as a campaign video. Arsonists attacked France’s rail system just hours before the Olympics were scheduled to start. Kamala Harris really knows how to appeal to everyday people in the Rust Belt.
BREAKING: Kamala Harris has officially launched her campaign with RuPaul and drag queens. pic.twitter.com/EJ1ccMEcO7
— Dom Lucre | Story Breaker (@dom_lucre) July 25, 2024
