By The Federalist (Politics) | Created at 2024-10-31 12:01:53 | Updated at 2024-11-06 18:31:28
6 days ago
While young people historically have low voter turnout, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has taken to social media to try to bridge the gap — but young voters shouldn’t be so quick to applaud her get-out-the-vote tactics.
What began with Harris hopping on the “brat summer” bandwagon has expanded to a full-fledged (and cringe) meme crusade, with the campaign trying to paper over Harris’ lack of accountability and abysmal record by following the trends of “chronically online” voters.
Many failures of the Biden-Harris administration directly affect young voters, making the transition from adolescent to adult harder than ever. The price of groceries continues to rise, and sky-high interest rates make it nearly impossible for young people to own a home, all with the cost of a college education and youth unemployment rates simultaneously increasing. But thanks to memes, young voters could be duped into casting a Harris-Walz vote.
The July 21 Charli XCX statement on X, “kamala IS brat,” was the post heard ’round the world, with 56,000 retweets and 333,000 likes to date. The attention sparked Harris’ “commitment to the bit,” as young people would say, with her campaign focusing on all vibes and no substance.
While this strategy may garner likes and reposts, the point is simply to wrap her crumbling campaign and embarrassing record as vice president in a pretty bow for the country’s freshest voting class. She and her team hope young people are so absorbed in their phones that they don’t think to ask the burning question: What will this candidate do to improve my life? Posting funny memes doesn’t count.
More than 100 days have passed without Harris doing a formal press conference, but Kamala HQ incessantly posts Gen Z-oriented TikToks. The campaign never misses the opportunity to use the day’s new viral trend or sound to speak young people’s language rather than speaking about the country’s most pressing issues.
Young voters’ concerns match those of the rest of the country. “Across all findings, the top-of-mind issues for young voters are not so different from the overall electorate and, at first glance, may even make more sense for voters three times their age,” according to a Blueprint poll of voters age 18-30 released in May. “The top issues among young voters are inflation (73%), healthcare (71%), jobs and the economy (70%), government spending and the federal deficit (63%), corruption (63%), and Social Security and Medicare (62%).”
These are real issues. Meanwhile, Kamala HQ is busy posting pointless TikToks, like this video featuring someone making tacos, with the caption, “Kamala Harris when it comes to making an economic plan that will uplift the middle class.” The actual economic plan that young voters are wondering about, however, is nowhere to be found. So much for “providing context,” as the account’s bio claims it does. The content of vice presidential candidate and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is no better. Here’s a video posted just this week of Walz playing video games. Priorities.
Young people, whether they go to college or head straight into the workforce, should be wary of the Harris strategy. Almost 60 percent of Americans aged 18-34 are on TikTok, according to a Pew Research Center study. Harris’ team is banking on these voters being simple-minded enough to support a candidate for hiring a few media-literate interns rather than addressing the broken policies of the Biden-Harris administration weighing on all Americans.
Polls reinforce that the country’s youngest adults are affected by the same issues as the country’s oldest. Frankly, it’s offensive to young Americans like me, who share in the real concerns of the rest of the country, to be courted with “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” videos rather than a coherent plan for border security.
Harris’ media strategy is attempting not to exist in the context of all that came before it. Don’t take the bait. Newly qualified voters, college students, and young adults must face the facts: This is a presidential election, not a vote on who should be the next member of the Hype House.
Kamden Mulder is a senior at Hillsdale College pursuing a degree in American Studies and Journalism and a former Federalist intern.
