Here Comes the ‘KHive’: Buzz Around Kamala Harris Grows After Biden’s Debate Stumble

Imagine a presidency that could exist, without the burden of what has been.

That’s the future that supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris dream of, based on a meme that references one of Ms. Harris’ favorite sayings: “What can be, unencumbered by what has been.”

Ms Harris has been criticised during her more than three years in office, with articles that her approach to the border crisis and her struggle to define her tenure in the often thankless role of vice president. She has proved unpopular enough among voters that she was often not immediately seen as President Biden’s obvious successor, while Democratic supporters often cited governors such as Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Gavin Newsom of California as more attractive choices.

But now, with Mr. Biden besieged with questions about his age and mental acuity after his alarming debate performance against former President Donald J. Trump last week, Ms. Harris is seeing a groundswell of support. It’s coming from prominent Democratic politicians signaling a willingness to close ranks around her, and from a group of supporters on social media who call themselves the “KHive,” who have shared posts calling attention to her occasionally wry quotes and videos of her dance moves.

“No coconut trees. Just context. Kamala for president,” Posted Ian Sandler-Brown, a 22-year-old Detroit resident who works on political campaigns, points to a semi-viral line from Mrs. Harris last year.

(“I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people,” said Mrs. Harris. said at a White House eventquoting her mother: “’Do you think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of everything you live in and everything that came before you.’)

Suddenly, emojis of coconut trees have appeared on Xs to express support, sometimes winking, for Ms. Harris’s successor to Mr. Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee. If her joviality — she has an outrageous laugh and is known for her impersonations — was once mocked, many Democrats now see it as a sign of vitality, in contrast to Mr. Biden’s often halting public performances.

“Ironically, khive posting is the most energized Democratic Party Twitter electorate has seen in about a year, and I think there’s probably some optimism in that,” said Kelly Weill, author and journalist. wrote on X.

Some posts on social media have drawn comparisons between Ms. Harris and “Veep,” the political satirical series starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a fictional vice president who almost accidentally becomes president.

“I think the explosion of memes right now is almost a release of pressure from a leftist movement that’s not doing so well online,” Ms. Weill, a 30-year-old New Yorker, added in an interview. “The fact that there’s something to joke about, that there’s something to rally around, feels like an optimistic energy in a place where there really wasn’t anything before.”

The social media users posting pro-Harris memes appear to be a diverse group, including progressives like Chi Ossé, the 26-year-old New York City councilwoman who has been deeply involved in the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s less clear who her base of support would be during the campaign.

In 2020, Ms. Harris struggled to define himself while she campaigned for president as a moderate while also courting progressives. More recently, she has made inroads among black voters, with polls consistently showing that group giving her higher marks on the job and in hypothetical showdowns with Mr. Trump than white voters. Some of her recent campaign events have focused on black and Hispanic voters, including a handful of stops in Las Vegas this spring, where she spoke to local union members and held an event on abortion rights alongside several prominent black women.

Amid all the jokes, Ms. Harris is at least getting some support from the establishment. Julián Castro, a former Obama administration official and 2020 presidential candidate, said Tuesday on MSNBC that Mr. Biden should drop out of the race and give Ms. Harris a chance to take on Mr. Trump.

“We have a group of people who could do a better job, including Vice President Harris,” he said.

Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, a close and longtime Biden ally, also said Tuesday, “I will support her if he were to step aside.”

At a White House news conference on Wednesday, Karine Jean-Pierre, the spokeswoman, said Biden had chosen Ms. Harris as his running mate because “she is indeed the future of the party.” In a CNN poll released on Tuesday, Ms. Harris trailed Mr. Trump by two percentage points in a hypothetical matchup, while Mr. Biden trailed the former president by six points.

Ms. Harris has remained loyal to the president. Asked about the prospect of leading the country on Tuesday, she told CBS News she was “proud to be Joe Biden’s running mate.”

Dan Morain, a veteran California journalist who wrote a biography of Ms. Harris, said both the jokes surrounding the vice president and her previous firings belied her political acumen.

“The reality is that Kamala Harris has been underestimated her entire career,” Mr. Morain said. “Is she a lightweight? I don’t think you run three times in the state of California and win if you don’t have political talent.”

In a preemptive bet that Ms. Harris could replace Mr. Biden at the top of the ticket, Republicans have stepped up their attacks on her, focusing in particular on her immigration policies.

MAGA Inc., a super PAC allied with Trump, openly flirted with the idea of ​​Ms. Harris taking the reins. “Is Invasion Czar Kamala Harris the Best They Got?” read the headline of a press release on Wednesday.

The House Republicans’ campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, released an ad on Wednesday declaring Ms. Harris the “enabler in chief” of the Biden administration. “Vote Republican. Stop Kamala,” the ad concluded.

In a post on X, the committee wrote that its members “will sharpen their knives if extreme Democrats in the House of Representatives abandon Joe Biden.”

While KHivers have found sympathy in Ms. Harris’s “unencumbered” line, an official account of Mr. Trump’s campaign, @TrumpWarRoom, posted a four-minute mash-up in which she repeats the line and calls her out for being rehearsed.

Mr Morain suggested that these attacks indicated that Ms Harris could be a formidable opponent to Mr Trump.

“She’s a talented politician. She’s not Bill Clinton. She’s not Barack Obama. But she’s a good politician, and so she’s being attacked,” he said. “If you’re worried about Kamala Harris being your opponent, this is the kind of thing you would do.”