Last Sunday, after President Biden announced he was stepping down from his presidential campaign and endorsing Kamala Harris as his replacement, Democratic meme makers rejoiced.
Minutes after the announcement, a group chat called “Rebel Alliance” — made up of left-wing creators who got to know one another during the 2020 campaign — lit up with excited messages.
“All the progressive meme warriors are giddy right now,” said John Sellers, a co-founder of The Other 98 Percent, a popular left-wing Facebook page with 7.1 million followers, who participated in the chat.
There’s “genuine excitement” about Ms. Harris among liberal creators, he said, “whereas with Biden we were trying to manufacture excitement from vapor.”
Plenty of Democrats are fired up right now, of course. Ms. Harris’s sudden rise has spurred record-breaking fund-raising, motivated fence-sitting donors and energized the party’s base.
But few are more excited than online creators and digital strategists of the internet’s political left, who specialize in making the memes, videos and shareable messages they hope will help get Ms. Harris elected in November.