Kamala Harris and the Coconut Tree, Explained

Here’s everything you need to know, in this edition of TL;DR.

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As Vice President Kamala Harris has emerged as a strong frontrunner to be drafted as the Democratic presidential nominee in place of President Joe Biden, a story she often repeats on the campaign trail is going viral and turning into a goofy — yet apparently sincere — campaign to support her candidacy.

Wait, I need more. What’s the background here?

On June 27, President Joe Biden debated against former president Donald Trump in a nationally televised event on CNN. This debate was noteworthy not only because it was the first-ever debate between two presidents, but because it was scheduled so far ahead of the election. Many Democrats were happy to have this early debate, reportedly believing that having voters see the candidate face off against Trump would boost his poll numbers and quell concerns about his age (81) going into the fall election season.

Yeah, literally the opposite happened. Biden had a terrible night, fumbled over his words at times, and seemed, well, very old. This kicked off a firestorm of debates on whether or not he should still be a nominee and possibly serve as the country’s president for a second term, which would conclude when he’s 86 (!).

Naturally, the question arose of who would be the nominee if Biden stepped down, and his VP, Harris, was an extremely logical choice. Regardless of what people think of her as the nominee overall, Harris is the only candidate that can legally access Biden’s campaign money, and she has the advantage of working in his administration, so she can easily run on essentially the same platform.

As all this discourse started, Harris’s stan army (yes, she has one), the KHive, began firing up their online support for their queen. Outside of the KHive, though, Harris has created a somewhat odd online reputation as being a little kooky. Her dances, her uproarious laugh, and her occasionally offbeat anecdotes in interviews have made her a favourite of memes poking fun at her — either with warmth or with a bit of mockery — and have become a kind of quasi-fandom of their own.

When it became a possibility that Harris may actually run for president, both of these groups kind of went nuts posting about her. The main meme that emerged came from an anecdote about her mother that Harris shared in a 2023 speech. In it, she conveyed the importance of thinking of yourself as part of a community rather than “in a silo.”

“My mother used to — she would give us a hard time sometimes, and she would say to us, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’” she said, laughing. “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”