| | | | |  | | By Anusha Mathur and Teresa Wiltz | With help from Rishika Dugyala and Jesse Naranjo
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Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at her campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, on Monday. | POLITICO illustration/Pool photo by Erin Schaff | Whew. What a difference a week makes. President Joe Biden’s decision to quit the campaign just weeks before the Democratic National Convention sent a jolt of adrenaline into a moribund Democratic campaign. Suddenly, Joe was out. Sunday night, more than 44,000 Black women crashed Zoom in an often emotional, impromptu planning session for Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden’s heir apparent. And Monday night, on a video call hosted by radio personality Roland Martin, 55,000 “Black Men for Harris” raised $1.3 million for her campaign.
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Meanwhile, Indian aunties took to social media to post, “In Sanskrit, “Kamala” = lotus. In American, Kamala = POTUS.”
It’s anybody’s guess what’ll happen come November. But one thing is certain: History will be made. We’ll either have our first woman/first South Asian president. Or we’ll have our first South Asian second lady. As Indian journalist Barkha Dutt declared on her show, “Mojo Story,” “The Indian ladies are taking over Washington, D.C.” You know we’ll be watching to see how this all plays out. All the best,
The Recast Team
| | | THE MEMES ARE MEME-ING
|  Vice President Kamala Harris arrives to speak from the South Lawn of the White House on July 22, 2024. | Alex Brandon/AP | Almost as soon as Biden endorsed Harris on Sunday, America’s internet warriors got to work, cranking out meme after meme of the Veep. The Kamala for President memes crafted by Black Twitter, Gen Zers on TikTok and other denizens of the internet are closely tied to pop culture and viral social media trends, showcasing her quirky interests — Venn diagrams! — funny phrases and “girlboss” moments. These memes and videos are largely served up by Gen Z — a critical bloc of voters that’s been lukewarm on Biden given concerns about his age and his support for Israel. Many of the memes serve a purpose: to propel her to the White House: As @Ritz_Th posted on X: “we absolutely MUST meme this woman into the presidency.” This enthusiasm from young voters represents a stark contrast to last week, when the Democratic ticket was hemorrhaging support from this demographic — an AP-NORC poll reported that those between the ages of 18 and 44 were very dissatisfied with Biden by more than 2 to 1 over Democrats over 45. While the presidential debate in June spotlighted concerns surrounding Biden’s fitness, in reality, both Biden and Trump have dealt with concerns surrounding their age. The most recent ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll revealed that 60 percent of Americans say Trump is too old for a second term. But with Biden stepping aside, the game has been fundamentally altered: Trump is now the oldest presidential nominee in history — giving Harris the opportunity to present herself as the candidate more in touch with America’s youth. As these memes have surged in the past few days, Harris’s campaign seems to be embracing these depictions, earning tens of millions of views by creating content that plays into popular Gen Z trends. Here are a few highlights:
|  | | Climbing the Coconut Tree: “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.” Ironically, this Kamala Harris quote from last May went viral because it was taken out of context and presented as a sort of absurd statement. Nonetheless, her internet supporters, as well as politicians — including Sen. Brian Schatz— have used this image of a coconut tree to pledge their support for Harris. Blast from the Past: Compilations have also emerged to represent Harris’ most meme-able moments, including her love of “good news” and “yellow school buses.” Live from New York: With Harris potentially a step closer to the White House, folks on the interwebs are campaigning for another woman of color: Maya Rudolph, who’s played the Veep on “Saturday Night Live.” Who’s On the Menu?: The internet was also quick to weigh in on — and take a jab at — the roster of Harris’ potential vice presidential nominees, as the majority of them are white men. Dance Party: While Harris’s speech in the wake of Biden dropping out of the race honored the president’s service, the internet sought to represent the other side of that coin — the presumed excitement that Harris might be feeling. | 
| 360 Election Season: This summer has been widely dubbed by Gen Z to be “Brat Girl Summer,” in reference to pop singer Charli XCX’s hit album “Brat.” Fan edits of Harris have been remixed to many pop artists, including Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Chappell Roan, with Charli XCX herself tweeting, “Kamala IS brat.” Wake Up Warriors: While many memes center Harris herself, there is also renewed energy to depict how Democrats will be mobilizing in her support, including Black women and members of the Divine Nine, a network of historically African American fraternities and sororities that Harris herself was a part of in college. Trump is ‘Not Like Us’: Many memes are also closely tied to Hollywood celebrity culture, including playing off the viral feud between rappers Drake and Kendrick Lamar. Lamar is widely considered by Gen Z to have “won” the battle, adding significance to this depiction of Harris as Lamar.
| | | FLASHBACK
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Then- Sen. Kamala Harris speaks during a Democratic presidential primary debate, Nov. 20, 2019, in Atlanta. | John Bazemore/AP | In 2020, when Joe Biden tapped Harris to be his running mate, The Recast’s Teresa Wiltz wrote an essay about the Veep-to-be’s abiding love of all things Prince. Here’s an excerpt: Kamala Harris is a Prince fan, and while you may think you already know a lot about her, her adoration of the Purple One is truly all you need to understand her in the context of 2020’s political craziness. She grew up in a subgeneration of integration babies, sandwiched between Boomers and Gen Xers, post civil rights, witnesses to hip-hop’s earliest days. Prince, early Prince, was rock and funk, throwing parties for folks of all colors — White/Black, Puerto Rican/Everybody just a-freaking — the patron saint of bougie Black kids who grew up straddling the jagged line between the white world and the Black world. Prince made being Black and sounding white cool, with all the complexities that entailed. Much has been made of Harris’s more obvious “firsts”—first Black woman on a ticket, first with an Asian background—but she’s also from a very particular moment in American cultural history. At age 55, the child of intellectuals in Northern California, she’s part of a cohort often ignored by demographers, Generation Jones, those of us who came of age during the Reagan years. We missed out on the Black Power Movement, the sexual revolution and women’s lib, Vietnam and Woodstock. |  The vice president is a noted fan of Prince. | Chris O'Meara/AP | All this shapes Harris the politician, for good and for not-so-good. As a Generation Joneser, she’s the Jan Brady of American politics, the perpetual middle child, wondering why we can’t all get along…. We integration babies are used to dancing to a complicated beat. Our parents had fought a different kind of fight. They were the ones beating on the door until white folks were forced to let them in, bracing themselves against Bull Connor’s fire hoses, letting the world know we shall not be moved. Read more here.
| | | ICYMI @ POLITICO CAMPAIGN CONVERSION — For a glimpse at how the Harris campaign is replacing Biden’s operation — and the rapid running mate search her ascension to the top of the ticket has created — read this detailed story from POLITICO’s Eugene Daniels, Elena Schneider and Christopher Cadelago. HOME STATE BACKING — Candidates vying to be the next governor of California have taken the unprecedented step of simultaneously fundraising for themselves and Harris’ presidential campaign, POLITICO’s Blake Jones reports. LAW ENFORCEMENT BONA FIDES — Harris’ background as a former prosecutor was seen by some Democrats as a hindrance to her first White House Bid. That may no longer be the case, writes POLITICO Magazine senior writer Ankush Khardori, a former prosecutor himself. THE FOREIGN POLICY ANGLE — Opponents of Biden’s stance on the war in Gaza may feel that Harris’ likely nomination offers some respite. But while she is no fan of Benjamin Netanyahu, her Israel policy may not end up being all that different from the president’s, writes POLITICO’s senior foreign policy correspondent Nahal Toosi.
| | | THE RECAST RECOMMENDS The first part of the “Karate Kid” spinoff show “Cobra Kai”’s final season just dropped. The Netflix original follows some of the original film series’ stars as they educate a new generation of martial arts stars. Eddie Murphy reprises his role as Axel Foley for the latest film in the “Beverly Hills Cop” series, “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.” In this installment, the titular character comes to the aid of his estranged daughter. It’s streaming now on Netflix. In “Problemista,” written and directed by and starring Julio Torres, a struggling toy designer in New York with a soon-expiring visa finds work with an eccentric art world figure. It’s streaming on Max now.
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| Also streaming on Netflix: “Supacell,” in which five ordinary Black Brits from South London discover they have super powers. All sorts of drama ensues. Childish Gambino, aka Donald Glover, unveiled what he says is his last album under that moniker. “Bando Stone and The New World” is streaming now wherever you get your music. Peso Pluma and Kenia Os drop the visuals for their song “TOMMY & PAMELA,” in which they seem to play the roles of the titular stars.
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| TikTok of the Week: Remixing into the Oval Office?
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