Harris and Walz need more than weird memes and brat videos to win

Tim Walz’s online ways have continued since Kamala Harris selected him; in his first appearance with her last week, he referenced an internet meme about J D Vance doing something unspeakable with a couch (untrue, for the record).

By Matthew Yglesias

Four years ago, it was inconceivable that a politician could meme his way onto the presidential ticket. Yet that’s what Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota just did, riding a viral quip about how “weird” Republicans are all the way to the Democratic vice presidential nomination.

Walz’s online ways have continued since Kamala Harris selected him; in his first appearance with her last week, he referenced an internet meme about J D Vance doing something unspeakable with a couch (untrue, for the record). And there’s little doubt that, for the moment at least, it’s working for them. Harris herself essentially launched her campaign with coconut memes and “Brat” references.

Still, they might want to remember that in 2020, President Joe Biden triumphed over his more fashionable Democratic rivals in part by recognizing that Twitter is not real life. The very young, very educated demographic that dominates internet discourse is not representative of the broader electorate.

To an extent, the Harris strategy is nothing more than a campaign trying to make the best of what it has. Biden was old, even four years ago, and desperately uncool, so his team turned that into a virtue: It successfully built a coalition of older and unfashionable Democrats to win a primary. Harris, meanwhile, wants to make this election into a referendum on Donald Trump and also faces the difficult task of building a campaign operation on the fly. So anything she can do to engage her base and fill space without saying anything too specific is useful.

There were doubtless multiple factors behind the decision to select Walz rather than Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, the popular governor of what is likely to be this election’s pivotal swing state. But somewhere on the list was the sense that a Shapiro selection would reignite the social media hostility to Biden’s Israel policy that did so much to generate bad vibes before the president dropped out. Will this actually work? I am skeptical. Harris is already being heckled by Gaza protesters at rallies.

Last week she skillfully shut the hecklers down, but left-wing Twitter wasn’t pleased with her approach. The bottom line is that there is a deep and substantive divide between people who want the US government to impose an arms embargo on Israel to coerce it into a cease-fire, and people who oppose that policy. Goofy memes are preferable to taking a clear stand on this question, because it’s a lose-lose issue for Democrats.

Sooner or later, though, people are going to want an answer. Harris will almost certainly land where Biden did — against the arms embargo and in support of the traditional US-Israel alliance — which is where the majority of the public is, even if the majority of TikTok influencers are not.

That’s the cold reality of electoral politics, though. I’m 43 years old, an uncool middle-aged dad who worries about day-camp pickup times and adjusting my ergonomic keyboard to avoid shoulder pain. Nonetheless, I’m more than 10 years younger than the median voter. Print newspapers and local TV may be losing relevance with each passing day, but they are still the primary means of communicating with older people, and the electorate has never been older.

Political scientists David Broockman and Josh Kalla have tested dozens of potential pro-Harris campaign messages. The most persuasive one? It touts Harris’ support for Social Security. No. 2 was about Medicare. Like I said, there are a lot of old people out there.

Calling Trump “weird,” by contrast, was one of the least effective messages. And while talking about child care, as Harris does in her brand new stump speech, speaks powerfully to the concerns of the thirty and forty something professionals who run campaigns, it performs dramatically worse than talking about Social Security and Medicare. Other polling data backs this up.

These are not messages that will go viral. People don’t make TikToks or Instagram Reels about Social Security and Medicare. Retirement security is not Brat.

But there are just a lot more old people in the electorate than there are cool young people or even parents of young kids. Biden’s advanced age eventually became a crippling handicap, but for a while it kept him and his inner circle of not-quite-as-old advisers better grounded in the realities of the electorate than the average Democrat.

It’s not exactly bad for the Harris campaign to put an entertaining show on the internet while it figures things out — that press release referencing a legendary dril tweet was well played. Harris has had to make a lot of decisions in a very short period of time: Not just crafting ads and selecting a vice presidential nominee, but programming a convention. On a more conceptual level, she has to come up with a way to talk about where she stands in 2024 versus positions she took in 2019 versus the policies of the Biden administration.

So far it’s worked out well: She’s moved up in the polls and regained the fundraising edge that Biden lost. If the current set of online antics is just a way to buy time to get the rest of the puzzle together, her team will look like geniuses come November. But sooner rather than later — if only to rebut Trump — Harris will have to engage with older, offline voters on their own terms.