The Power of Oddball Charm

Back in 2016, when Donald Trump was first performing open-brain surgery on the American psyche, it became common to say that politics had become the new national entertainment. Cable news was a reality show, rallies were WWE matches, and the #Resistance was comparable to the Rebel Alliance. Then, during the Biden administration, the quiet governance of a comparatively boring president seemed to potentially indicate another paradigm shift. Even as MAGA-land continued to froth with drama, the traffic and viewership of news outlets—including right-wing ones—cratered.

But the show seems to be back on, now that Kamala Harris is the presumptive Democratic nominee. Certainly, I am shocked to find myself clicking and sharing political news and videos out of genuine interest rather than dull obligation. The much-noted energy shift in the race over the past two weeks is not just about a younger candidate or tightening polls. It’s about the way that Harris’s oddball charm satisfies the content demands of the moment, harnessing how the online-media environment—and the cultural hungers it taps into—have shifted in recent years.

Across the internet, funny clips of Harris are making the rounds, some of them unearthed from years earlier. There’s one of her talking to a 10-year-old about carnitas tacos in a tone of utmost solemnity. There’s one of her impersonating her mother-in-law, squealing, “You’re prettier than you are on television!” And, of course, there’s the coconut-tree speech, related in sing-song inflections, whipping from stand-up routine to sermon. Republicans have tried to use quirky Harris clips to mock her. But these videos have mostly been circulated by gleeful supporters, who are parsing and remixing them like sports highlights.

Harris’s viral moments are fun to watch because they show a serious person having, well, fun. Even the tense videos—the viral “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking” delivered to Mike Pence during their 2020 vice-presidential debate—are laden with smirks. But they don’t come off as overly canned either; they’re too idiosyncratic for that. Harris’s laugh has already been much dissected—with sexist overtones—but that giggle is just a small part of her larger performance of authenticity. Being in proximity to the nuclear football has not stopped her from finding life amusing, quite clearly.

Which means she’s perfect for TikTok. Though notorious for elevating bland faces and simplistic dances, the platform’s more important cultural function is to surface innovations in human personality. The very same technology that is distracting people from real-life social activity and feeding epidemics of loneliness and alienation is (not coincidentally) driven by performers who are talented at creating a sense of intimacy with strangers in the briefest of instances. Terms that wonks and branding consultants have long used to refer to a public figure’s intangibles—charisma, optics, X factor—have accordingly been reincarnated as youth slang: rizz, aura, vibes.

[Read: The “Espresso” theory of gender relations]

In place of the smooth unflappability that previous media paradigms defined as charming, this new ecosystem wants a blend of joyful goofiness and sharp intelligence. TikTok has dumped fame on Julia Fox, the model who spellbinds the camera with lisping, cigarette-fried ramblings undergirded by rigorous feminism. It has anointed young singers such as Reneé Rapp and Chappell Roan, who communicate in symphonies of wincing self-deprecation. As soon as Harris announced her candidacy, her brand became conflated with Charli XCX’s Brat, an experimental pop album about doing cocaine and having social anxiety. This was inexplicable on the level of substance but made some sense as style. Brats don’t hide who they are, and neither, it feels, does Harris.

To compare the first female vice president to influencers and pop stars is obviously a loaded exercise. But the affectionate memeification of Harris is, in fact, explicitly gendered: She’s being treated in the same terms as so many social-media phenoms cheered as “girlie” or “mother.” That’s not only because she’s a symbol of feminine power. It’s probably because people who don’t fit neatly within stereotypes about gender—or race, sexuality, or other identity categories—tend to have to invent some part of their personality. This invention process feeds today’s attention economy, which is all about sharing teensy audiovisual treats. A fun mannerism, a new tic, is like a delicacy.

Trump himself has long understood the entertainment value of breaking with social expectations—in his case, the expectations that say that a politician should try to behave with comity. During the 2016 election cycle, his continual patter of dark prophecies and kooky observations marked him as all too interesting next to Hillary Clinton’s more traditional, circumscribed approach. (The Onion imagined her trying to project relatability through a satirical op-ed column: “I Am Fun.”) This cycle, he temporarily benefitted from facing a rival, Joe Biden, who was particularly unsuited for a social-media environment set up to make snap judgments about how fluidly people act on camera. Democrats’ attempts to brand the president as the badass “Dark Brandon,” mostly by laying text over static images—the meme format of an earlier internet era—only highlighted the problem: Recent videos of Biden tend to inspire people to swipe away, not obsessively rewatch.

But with Harris in the race, Trump’s communication style is striking a different contrast. The rambling campaign-rally format that he pioneered was, after all, a pre-TikTok invention, one that helped cable news fill hours of airtime. Against an opponent whose social-media appeal derives from everyday breeziness—who will, for example, will riff with you about recipes—Trump’s insult-comic bluster could come to seem stilted or even, yes, weird. Lately, he’s jesting about Hannibal Lecter from the stump. Does he believe Lecter was a real person? Is he confusing “insane asylums” with “asylum seekers”? Speculate as you like, but the bit seems mainly intended as an inside joke trolling the scolding, self-important Democrats who just don’t get it.

Now, though, the Democrats have their own inside jokes. They have coconuts and “context” and “unburdened by what has been.” Of course, those memes may soon grow stale from overuse. Harris’s online appeal could curdle if her team tries to flagrantly force viral moments to happen, rather than stand back and allow the public to react to her persona. In any case, it’s certainly not clear that an amused electorate is one that’s more likely to vote. But so far, at least, the ease—and yes, silliness—with which Harris carries herself is earning a precious commodity: positive attention.

Last week’s rally in Atlanta offered a demonstration of how politics and entertainment can collide, to either awkward or effective ends. Two rappers—Megan Thee Stallion and Quavo—gave a performance and a speech that evoked labored celebrity efforts on behalf of previous Democrats. Celebrity endorsements can jolt the public into enthusiasm and donations, but they can just as easily create annoyance, even backlash. Eventually, though, Harris herself spoke. Her speech was full of familiar rhetoric—she’s the prosecutor taking on the felon, saying “We’re not going back!,” while remaining coy on policy details. But it was delivered with a kind of light, smiling swagger that felt unusual for a presidential campaign. Clips were everywhere the next day. The point was not what she was saying, but how she was saying it: a hallmark, perhaps now more than ever, of what people want from politics.