The Cringification of the Democratic Party
As long as Democrats continually fail to understand why their attempts at outreach come off as pathetic and cringey, they will continue to lose with demographics clued into culture.
A video featuring Vice-President Kamala Harris and BET Awards host Taraji P. Henson has been going viral online, and not for a good reason. The video, played at the awards ceremony last Sunday, sees Harris talking with Henson about the stakes for the 2024 election.
“Girl, I’m out here on these streets,” said Harris, looking like someone was holding a gun to her head just off-screen. She later added, “the majority of us believe in freedom and equality, but these extremists, as they say, ‘They not like us,’” referring to a song by rapper Kendrick Lamar.
Oof.
This isn’t the first time Harris or the Biden Administration have come under fire for releasing bizarre and cringey content attempting to relate with their voters. Just last month, the stars of Queer Eye visited the White House for Pride Month festivities. A video showed Harris chumming around with the cast, desperately attempting to look like a normal human being.
President Biden hasn’t let Harris have all the fun though, does anyone remember the widely panned video featuring Biden and a number of black guys eating chicken dinner? Many at the time called it pandering, with some accusing the president of engaging in racist tropes.
To help him better connect with the youth, Biden has been looking to hire a meme manager for a starting salary of $85k a year. Though one wonders why he needs one since, according to the New York Times, “At least one of the president’s grandchildren has expressed interest in getting more involved with the campaign, perhaps by talking with influencers on social media.”
Biden can save his sinking campaign by twerking on TikTok. That’ll really connect with the voters.
To be fair to the current administration, cringey attempts to connect with voters are at least 8 years old. Some of the cringiest moments of the 2016 campaign came from Hillary Clinton’s desperate desire to sound hip. At a rally in Annandale, Virginia, Clinton infamously mused on how to get young voters to “Pokémon GO to the polls.”
My personal favorite was a short Snapchat video featuring a “Chillery Clinton” beer koozie and an uncomfortably close Clinton announcing she was “just chillin’ in Cedar Rapids.”
Democrats are right to understand the power that memes and popular culture have on the political process. A Newsweek poll showed that nearly a fifth of voters would be more likely or significantly more likely to back a candidate endorsed by pop star Taylor Swift.
And more than one pundit has argued that r/The_Donald on Reddit, with its almost 800,000 members, used “meme magic” to help get Trump elected. Clearly the powers that be found it to be a potent tool for Trump, since site admins used an excuse about “abusive posts” to ban it in 2020.
Speaking of Trump, there’s a reason why Trumpworld’s memes come off as less cringey. They feel more organic and natural. They don’t feel like they were crafted in a lab or a committee room.
When NBC Reporter Kelli Stavast misheard chants of “Fuck Joe Biden” from an Alabama Nascar crowd as “Let’s Go Brandon,” Trump proxies were quick to claim it and spread it around the web and it even made its way up to Biden when a parent used the phrase during a call with the President on Christmas Eve.
Sometimes Democrats hand Trump memes he can turn around and use on them to much greater effect. In May 2022, President Biden attempted to paint Trump and Republicans as “Ultra MAGA,” a phrase he believed would freak voters into seeing Trump as an extremist candidate. Trumpworld gleefully embraced the label. Individuals who donate $814,600 to Trump’s fundraising operation can earn the “Ultra MAGA” title for themselves, a clear sign that the attack failed to land.
As long as Democrats continually fail to understand why their attempts at outreach come off as pathetic and cringey, they will continue to lose with demographics clued into culture. Trump is already making solid inroads with young voters, something that seemed unthinkable just a few months ago.
The Democrat’s perception as out-of-touch and uncool is starting to have consequences. And it’s not something a few TikTok dances can fix.