How Kamala Harris went from ‘Copala’ to ‘cool’ in five years: ANALYSIS

CHICAGO — In 2019, then-California senator, former prosecutor and failing White House candidate Kamala Harris was dubbed “Kamala the cop” online. Now, the vice president and Democratic presidential nominee Harris is “brat.”

The difference in Harris’ reception online, fueled by both her own campaign efforts and organic grassroots enthusiasm, has been key to how she has been able to unite and energize the Democratic coalition under unprecedented circumstances instead of facing blowback from a fractured and antagonistic base.

“With the vice president, she laughs, she jokes, she does fun things, she makes memes, and is a meme herself. And that is what attracts young people to pay attention and be engaged, and I think that’s why she’s been so successful,” said Allison Wiseman, the president of the Kentucky Young Democrats.

It’s precisely those young people who have been swarming social media with content, placing Harris firmly in the center of youth pop culture.

Videos of her referencing an old expression of her late mother’s and a coconut tree swept across the internet. She was dubbed “brat” in reference to a popular Charli XCX song — a title her campaign swiftly adopted. And fawning clips spread of her laughing, taking back [reappropriating] an expression that Republicans had previously used as an attack line.

The flood has coincided with a sharp rise in support from young voters that Harris is enjoying compared to President Joe Biden’s numbers before he ended his own presidential campaign last month — a rise that could be key for Harris’ path to victory this year.

“They’re taking up this power at the ballot box, taking up their voting power, but they’re also absolutely exercising their narrative power,” said Deja Foxx, a content creator who spoke at the Democratic National Convention and worked on Harris’ 2020 campaign. “Young people hold the lion’s share of narrative power on the internet, and we know that those internet narratives are then driving conversations in traditional media.”

That’s a far cry from the 2020 Democratic primary.

Running in a cycle dominated by conversations around social justice and the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis, Harris’ past as a prosecutor rubbed the party’s activist base the wrong way. More comfortable in mainstream politics, Harris struggled to find her policy footing amid a wave of progressive enthusiasm. Videos at the time, including one focused on turkey-basting, were criticized as cringey.

She was also running in a crowded primary. Heavy-hitting progressive opponents included Biden and Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. — and their supporters were aggressive in boosting their chosen candidates and filleting any opponents.

“I remember people calling her ‘Copala.’ Four years ago, I think there was less excitement, but that’s because she was aside a lot of progressive figures,” said Ryan Long, a Harris supporter and content creator how made a viral “brat” video.

Now, Harris is running in an environment transformed.

Criminal justice reform is still a Democratic Party priority, though resentment of law enforcement is less pervasive. She’s been in a high-profile perch for over three years, with an advantageous issue set on abortion. And, perhaps most importantly, Harris is the sole Democrat running — offering the party faithful only one option to defeat former President Donald Trump.

“People don’t want a rematch of 2020, and I feel like people are just really relieved, just because of that, more than anything. And I think the memes help too,” said activist David Hogg.

Harris’ placement atop Democrats’ ticket was the culmination of months of pressure on Biden and anxiety among the base, which brought speculation of the party’s future from a simmer to a boil just as the president ended his campaign and setting the stage for a social media explosion that virtually guaranteed Harris would ride a wave of enthusiasm from a base desperate to shrug off its sense of gloom.

“I think one of the best parts about Joe Biden waiting so long to drop out is that it gave Kamala more time to almost build up this fandom, similar to more like pop culture celebrity icons rather than a traditional political figure,” Long said. “A large portion of why people are so excited is because the people were unexcited about the person that she’s replacing.”

Harris’ new campaign, and their allies, moved quickly.

Content creators cranked out videos that amassed millions of views, alongside Harris’ nimble social media team, dominated by millennials with cultural fluency. Content on each platform was geared toward different audiences, and the pace of new content was high.

One TikTok that racked up over 5 million likes showed a Trump campaign plane landing near Harris’ jet, with a narrator expressing frustration. Another TikTok showed Minnesota Gov. and Harris running mate Tim Walz taking a picture of Harris over a track of rapper Nicki Minaj talking about having a picture taken of her.

That agility not only kept the stream of content flowing but also sent a signal to Gen Z voters.

“Things move fast on the internet. It is the nature of how platforms like TikTok and trends move. They often have life cycles of a few days to a few weeks before they become kind of cringe,” Foxx said.

“They’re responsive to Gen Z language and audios and trends. And I think that actually reflects something larger to young voters, which is that this campaign is listening to them,” she added.

Beyond harping on viral trends, the videos showed Harris at work, crisscrossing the globe as vice president, but also offered what some people described as an unvarnished look at her on the trail and in her personal life.

“She’s clearly who she is,” Hogg said. “Young people are just relieved to see somebody who doesn’t look like their fed talking points. You can’t fake your laughter.”

That strategy, Harris might say, didn’t fall out of a coconut tree.

Jamal Simmons, Harris’ former communications director, told ABC News that former White House senior adviser Anita Dunn — who has joined the Harris campaign — made it clear to those working for the vice president that many Americans were getting news through their phones instead of cable news or newspapers, sparking a “concerted effort” to build relationships with content creators with large followings to make Harris more accessible.

“When the shift came to her as a leader, she had already had a foundation and relationships with people in these communities that was significant. It was an overnight success that was three years in the making,” Simmons said.

When Simmons was communications director, he had the team focus on what he called a three-pronged PHP strategy — photo, headline and post — with the goal of having each step prove interesting enough to cause scrollers to move on to the next, buying valuable extra seconds in user interactions.

“How do we communicate the people who are moving very quickly in their information diet? he said. “That became something that we were focused on.”

The Harris team’s social media momentum after Simmons left and senior adviser Stephanie Young led the charge in significantly expanding her social media reach, including publishing viral videos with celebrities.

Foxx said the strategy goes back even further.

The 2019 campaign leaned on a similar social media strategy. Now, it’s fine tuned it, matching changes in the overall perceptions of the platforms themselves.

“I was absolutely fighting an uphill battle to convince not only people on in my office, but more generally, that TikTok was not just an app for dancing teens,” Foxx said. “Trying to overcome the belief that this was a fleeting platform, that it didn’t have staying power, and that it was just like a dancing app for teenagers, over the last four years, we’ve completely seen TikTok take on a life of its own.”

Still, social media can’t sustain a campaign.

Policies will have to be rolled out, as Harris recently did on the economy. Young voters, who make up the heart of the activist base, have already proven that platitudes only hold their interest for so long.

But with those rollouts come more opportunities for social media promotion.

“Now, people, they like her personality, they like who she is, and now she has the next couple weeks to lay out what Kamala Harris presidency is gonna look like,” Long said. “And that’s just gonna set up the next few months of content.”