Choose a Girl

A Monmouth University poll released the week after she entered the race showed her running third in a crowded Democratic field that eventually numbered more than two dozen. With 11% support, she trailed only Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, both of whom had run presidential races before. With only a few months to wage a campaign against Trump, Harris couldn’t afford to repeat the mistakes that tanked her last presidential bid. Hers would need to be a virtually error-free sprint to Election Day.

• Harris has been spawning memes longer than she’s been vice president.
• Propeller heads finalized a plan for legislation to take away tax rebates from corporate landlords who increased rent by more than 5 percent a year, a potentially massive new federal intervention to reverse a major driver of inflation.
• The campaign has been comforted by internal data showing that most of the people Biden has lost since the debate are unlikely to vote for Trump, suggesting they may come back.
• It needs an inspirational candidate, but it also relies on a unified staff.

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Another policy stumble marred what seemed to be her breakthrough moment. In a debate in June, she attacked Biden for opposing school busing in the 1970s. Making the leap from state to national politics proved daunting for her. Rivals like Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren had spent much of their adult lives steeped in policy. On the day the $1 million ad buy was supposed to begin running, Harris dropped out. By the time she quit, Harris lacked money, a message and a cohesive campaign operation — all ingredients of a successful candidacy.

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It’s impossible to say why any particular meme — political or otherwise — catches fire over another. But part of Harris’ persona as portrayed on the internet is just that she brings an energy that’s in stark contrast to President Biden and former President Donald Trump. But the meme took on new life this summer, after President Biden’s disastrous debate performance fueled speculation that he might step aside as the Democratic nominee. Harris’ supporters, also known as the KHive, were waiting in the wings. The “coconut tree” meme originates from a May 2023 speech Harris gave at a White House event for advancing opportunities for Hispanic Americans. In 2016, the Sydney-born starlet penned a post to social media about undergoing the procedure three years earlier, according to the Sun.

Why are we even talking about coconut trees?

As the sitting vice president, she is a leading candidate to succeed Biden after his exit from the race, receiving his immediate endorsement. Other elected officials might step forward to challenge Harris, dividing Democrats and clouding the general election picture ahead of a November showdown with Donald Trump. Since then, the moment has been remixed into Charli XCX’s “Von Dutch” and Britney Spears’ “Gimme More.” Democratic operatives have spoken of being “coconut-pilled.” The meme flourished into 2028 debate fan fiction. Google searches for “coconut tree” started climbing in the U.S. in early July.

Biden is testing how far a president can lead when his followers go astray. The mantra of former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — “Diversity is our strength. But two days after that July 11 NATO news conference, the president found himself hunched in front of a stone fireplace in his Rehoboth Beach, Del., home, losing his temper. A war hero had just questioned the toll that age took on his ability to lead.

A long interview with Complex magazine, another with BET, a third with Lester Holt of NBC News. He needed to get out more, to prove his mettle, to replace the images of the doddering debate night in everyone’s mind. History will record that as things got worse, Biden fought harder. Many Democrats described the first three weeks of July as a kind of nightmare — too extraordinary to be real, too unexpected to be believed. While Kennedy denies playing a spoiler role that would hand the election over to Trump, Kennedy has told reporters that he believes Mr. Biden’s odds of beating Trump in November are slim. “For me personally I just like really boring bed sex because I’ve done everything really wild and crazy,” he said.

Other officials said more effort was still being put into planning a future agenda. The preparations for a Trump takeover, they added, had begun months earlier, as a normal course of business. The conversation occurred just two days after the assassination attempt against Trump, who had posted on social media that it was “imperative” for Kennedy to receive Secret Service protection.

Significant parts of the president’s campaign and White House team were saying privately that, after a disastrous debate performance on June 27, they no longer believed. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) sat down with Biden after the news conference to warn the president that his candidacy imperiled Democratic hopes of taking back the House. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) shared the same warning days later. In the video, Mr. Trump is heard through Kennedy’s speakerphone, agreeing with Kennedy’s discredited sentiments about vaccines before trying to coax the independent candidate into endorsing his campaign. The former president also shared details about his attempted assassination during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday and the phone call that followed between him and President Biden. A campaign is akin to an expensive startup business on a national scale.

Like all of us, the coconut tree moment exists in the context of all in which it lives and what came before it. Which is to say, it’s part of a larger set of memes surrounding Kamala Harris’ political persona. Harris has been spawning memes longer than she’s been vice president. But her laugh, her bus, her dance moves and her love of Venn diagrams have all become social media fodder. Then the 81-year-old president, traveling to campaign events to try to prove his vigor, contracted covid again.

In the weeks before President Biden announced he would not be seeking reelection, some Democrats online rallied behind Vice President Kamala Harris to become the party’s new nominee. Now people worried to each other that the future of the world order could be at stake. White House senior staff let it be known that their doors were open to underlings if anyone needed to talk through the difficulties. “Keep the faith,” senior deputy White House press secretary Andrew Bates posted on social media Thursday. At times, it seemed the code of loyalty that had long followed Biden’s operations was coming undone. Some advisers shifted their focus from planning a second term to planning ways to lock in the policy wins they had achieved before Trump would take over, according to a Biden administration official briefed on the work.