By John Loftus, Daily Caller News Foundation | December 31, 2024
This summer, our political elites, our supposed intellectual betters, fell under the spell of unfunny coconut memes and a bratty British singer. There were many dumb moments in politics in 2024, ranging from Nancy Pelosi’s comment that President Joe Biden belongs on Mount Rushmore along with the likes of Lincoln and Washington, to Tim Walz pretending to be an experienced pheasant hunter and later playing Madden with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez while rocking a dorky gaming headset. One moment, however, captures not only how stupid Big Politics can get but also how out of touch our political elites are with Americans living outside Manhattan, D.C., and Los Angeles: “brat summer.”
Over the summer, Kamala Harris’s campaign went on a meme blitz and attempted to tether the woefully unpopular presidential candidate to British pop star Charli XCX amid the latter’s sixth studio album release, “Brat.” Upon its debut, the pop/dance album went viral on social media, fueling content and a new batch of fleeting references for Zoomer influencers. The Harris campaign immediately leaned into the buzz and adopted the album’s neon green color and black font on their Twitter account. They wanted to paint Harris, an empty corporate suit and establishment shill, as a bold, vibrant, in-touch agent of change.
Charli XCX described a “brat” as a “girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes.”
“You’re just like that girl … who feels herself but maybe also has a breakdown. But kind of like, parties through it, is very honest, very blunt. A little bit volatile. Like, does dumb things. But it’s brat. You’re brat. That’s brat,” the singer said in a TikTok post.
Liberal corporate media gobbled it up, of course. July and August news cycles featured headlines and talk of the campaign’s “joy” and “good vibes.” Can Kamala overcome her debilitating flaws by emitting the best vibes? Can she vibe her way back to the White House? One CNN headline — from late October — reads, “American Battleground: How ‘brat summer’ set up Kamala Harris’ remarkable run.” Remarkably poor run. It was all laughable and stupid at the time, and even more so in hindsight.
But the fact that the Harris campaign and media took it so seriously betrayed the vice president and the Democratic Party’s worst flaw: they are incompetent defenders of a broken status quo, and still think they can sell that platform by appealing only to their own, to the young and online who live and work in America’s big cities. Simply, they do not understand their fellow citizens, nor do they try. They live in physical and online bubbles, floating further and further away from reality with each passing day.
It was brat summer for affluent white liberals, but not the rest of the country.
John Loftus is an editor at large at Daily Caller News Foundation
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