The Harris Campaign Is Extremely Online. That's Good.

Kamala Harris' campaign is strategically and successfully tormenting the tormenters.

A terminally online campaign the likes of which we've never seen, they are posting pictures of Harris' crowds compared to Trump's crowds and tagging the Big Boy on Truth Social. They are mocking his anger. And they are doing the most devastating post of all: Quoting Trump verbatim instead of cleaning up his quotes like The New York Times and other mainstream outlets have done for years and years.

It's driving Trump insane to a degree no one ever has.

And it's all very intentionally part of an extremely online presidential campaign clearly run by older millennials, also known as the Greatest Generation. These are folks who has been tormented by the American right for their entire political lives. They have watched as Democrats, guided by their learned helplessness in the face of a right wing that long ago stopped observing political niceties and decorum, have had the shit beat out of them over and over again, most painfully seen in the Republican judicial coup of 2015-2020.

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No more, these millennials (again, the Only Good Generation) have said with one voice. With withering online posts on various social media platforms over the past three weeks, the Harris-Walz campaign has bullied the bully and essentially shrunk Trump as a person and as a presidential candidate. Joe Biden's 2020 campaign was predicated on painting Trump as marauding, scheming tyrant who could only be stopped at the ballot box. I suppose they were right, because it worked. Harris and her people have taken an entirely different approach in the run-up to the 2024 election, using social media to make Trump and his running mate look small and ridiculous and whiney and ineffectual. Because here's the thing: They are.

Vance has run to mainstream media outlets to cry about being "bullied" on the internet with false stories about his lust for couches and his general weirdness. What else would you call a guy who is utterly obsessed with birthrates and reproduction? What else would you call a guy who stalks the vice president on various tarmacs? What else would you call a guy who brags about Donald Trump hitting on his wife?

Vance has made a political career from bullying marginalized groups who want nothing more than basic rights and the respect of their fellow citizens. Vance has excelled with such bullying tactics because it comes naturally to him, a small, hateful man who has no principles of with to speak. He likes bullying. You can see it in his smug face. Being bullied, not so much.

Posting in a way that antagonizes Trump and Vance has worked because they can't help themselves but to respond. This, as I outlined in a recent BFT piece, is known as a dilemma action: Putting your opponent in a lose-lose situation with a lighthearted and/or mocking strategy. The Harris campaign's excellent posting puts Trump in a dilemma precisely because if he responds to their well-timed taunts, he looks ridiculous while instantly emboldening his opposition. If he doesn't react – a sheer impossibility for the most undisciplined politician in history – then he looks weak and vulnerable. The Harris folks know the Big Boy will lash out. It's why they're posting this shit.

By far the most in-touch campaign of my lifetime, the Harris operation has poked and prodded Trump and Vance enough to throw them off their game, maybe permanently. They've become so accustomed to being the tormenter that they surely never imagined that they could become the tormented. That's precisely what they are today as Harris and Walz make laughingstocks of their opponents, draw enormous, Obama-like crowds, and pump some laughter and joy into a political landscape that has been dark and dreary for much of the past decade.

The Harris campaign refuses to play the same old game Democrats have played in the 21st century. This is anything but the stodgy campaign to which millennials – and our zoomer brethren – have grown accustomed. We understand this online torment in a way that our parents and grandparents cannot. Kamala is trolling the trolls. And I say: Keep trolling.

Follow Denny Carter on BlueSky at @cdcarter13.bsky.social and on Threads and X at @CDCarter13.