Less than 24 hours after Joe Biden announced that he will not accept the Democratic nomination for president and will instead endorse VP Kamala Harris, a shirt reading “Harris 2024” went viral. Within hours of the totally normal, completely precedented news, someone got their hands on an unsanctioned campaign shirt reading HARRIS 2024, and wore it on the DC metro. In that same time frame, Charli XCX tweeted that Harris “IS brat,” and quickly a group of people were apparently spotted wearing neon green “brat” Kamala shirts.
Understandably the party needs to move quickly to create the necessary deluge of Kamala Harris supporters if they want to beat Trump, but this lightning fast turnaround of shareable merch seems to indicate something else entirely: this is an election marketing machine that Joe Biden could not have tapped into.
The extremely online world of memes is ripe for this campaign if only someone could handle it without ruining the irony that makes it actually funny and shareable. Young people want to vote, they want to involve themselves and they want to not have it all be so … cringe. This is not the pantsuit nation of Hilary Clinton (or for that matter, the “Pearls and Chucks” moment for Harris’s 2020 run) – which divided supporters between a sort of sanitized version of feminism and people who wanted to look past what a woman wears; or the red hat of MAGA which is a simple but loud marker of your views. This is about being in on, and yet subverting the joke and the absurdity of the world we’re existing in while, of course, wearing it on your literal sleeve.
A shirt reading Harris’s now famous coconut tree quote “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?' You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you," is also being widely shared via an Etsy shop. The coconut tree quote has become a joke so let’s check that off but the messaging has perhaps a bit more serious undertone. This acknowledgement that, while unplanned, a win would be historic, and only exist within the context of the women who came before her (including her Indian immigrant mother, who is the inspiration for the original ‘coconut tree’ story).
Officially, what the campaign is selling is all the same as it has been since before she became the presumptive nominee. Joebiden.com has merchandise with scripted versions of her name, a shirt with photos of her when she was younger and a Pride mug with her suit colors making out the bisexual flag. Staying out of the meme cycle is probably for the best. The second it starts to feel like the organic nature is gone, it will no doubt become cringe (see: Dark Brandon). If the Harris campaign is attempting to capture young people, this one day of tk shows they can.
And when it comes to merch, maybe DIY (or wishfully thinking, upcycled) is the move. It feels like followers can take a part in something without being totally entrenched. And if a climate positive platform is forthcoming, it can’t hurt to apply it to decidedly wasteful fast fashion-esque merchandise anyway and not create hundreds of thousands of new shirts.an’t hurt to apply it to decidedly wasteful fast fashion-esque merchandise anyway.
