Kamala’s Brat-ification Is Not the Win Her Campaign Thinks It Is
By Victoria Marshall
After Vice President Kamala Harris announced she was running to replace Joe Biden as her party’s nominee for president, British pop star Charlie XCX declared that “kamala IS brat.”
Now for those of you living under a rock, “brat” is the title of Charlie’s new album and Gen Z’s new favorite persona-aesthetic. In Charlie’s own words, “brat” is “that girl who is a little messy and likes to party, and maybe says dumb things sometimes, who feels herself but then also maybe has a breakdown but parties through it. It’s very honest; it’s very blunt — a little bit volatile, does dumb things, but, like, it’s brat. You’re brat. That’s brat.”
In other words, brat is female hedonism on the sloppy side. Cue Kamala.
Shortly after Charlie’s tweet went viral, Harris’ campaign account changed its masthead to “kamala hq” in the same lower-case font and Nickelodeon-esque slime green of Charlie’s album.
The terminally online took “kamala IS brat” a step further. Deftly edited mashup videos of cringe-worthy Kamala moments overlaid with Brat’s pop ballads peppered the internet. Harris’ campaign, we assume, hoped this would make inroads with Gen Z voters and win their support.
Yet Kamala’s brat-ification is not the win her staff thinks it is. For starters, memes do not translate into votes. A new Quinnipiac University poll shows former president Trump crushing Harris among 18–34-year-olds. CNN data guru Harry Enten revealed that despite the pandering, Harris is struggling to gain support among young voters.
“At the end of the 2020 campaign, Joe Biden won voters under the age of 35 by 21 points,” Enten told CNN viewers. “What do we see with Kamala Harris? Well, she's still ahead. But the margin here is significantly less than what we saw with Joe Biden back in 2020. She's up by just nine points.”
Rebranding yourself into a niche internet meme does not appeal to broad swaths of voters, either, and particularly in the rustbelt. Already Harris is polling worse against Trump in key swing states than Biden did before he dropped out. As Harris’ team should know, winning elections is a numbers game, and if you don’t have the requisite number of ballots secured in crucial swing states, you lose.
Finally, a word on kamala-as-brat. Is Harris a little messy? Yes. Does she say and do dumb things? Also, yes. But part of what makes the brat archetype cool and appealing to a Gen Z audience is that the brat is self-aware. She knows her flaws. She knows the way she is acting is dumb or selfish. But she does it anyway because it's ironic and that gives her pleasure. And at least she’s honest about that.
But Harris lacks the self-awareness that makes brat cool. Whether it’s her weird dancing or painful ad-libbing (“You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you”), Harris is trying desperately hard to be liked. Her behavior is contrived but not ironic. She is fake instead of honest. And fakeness is exactly what Gen Z is hellbent on avoiding.
Harris is no brat. Her entire persona is manufactured. She has no real policy positions and has flip-flopped whenever it’s politically expedient. She gaslit America over Biden’s cognitive decline. And now she is gaslighting America about her role as Biden’s “border czar.” She is not “honest” or “blunt,” as Charlie describes the brat. She is a clumsy authoritarian who will do anything to seize power, even if that means rebranding herself into a meme.
Gen Z is pretty good at identifying a fraud when they see one. Let’s hope with the kamala-is-brat phenomenon, they have a good few laughs, and then they let it die on the internet archive where it belongs.
Victoria Marshall is a reporter for The Family Research Council. She lives in Washington, DC.
