Permacrisis, enshittification and rizz are tough acts to follow. But ‘vibes’ must now be a contender for 2024 word of the year. It's currently having, yes, a vibe.
The word has become the preferred description – pejoratively at times – for Kamala Harris’s supercharged US presidential bid. Is she all vibes and no substance? Is it just a ‘sugar high’ from the newness of her campaign?
In the political world, a clear definition of vibes is elusive. Vague and scarcely tangible, yet emotionally powerful enough to create a ‘moment’. They capture the zeitgeist as a surfer might catch the right wave.
The traditional theory is that politics is determined by clear inputs. The economy grows, crime falls, and you create more jobs. Result? You are re-elected. But in the modern world of fractured media this simple equation fails to fully predict public behaviour or psychology – just ask Joe Biden, who was unable to rally good feelings around America’s strong post-pandemic economic recovery and industrial policy.
There are other things going on – you might call it vibes.
Tony Blair understood this and rode with the vibes of 1997 to take New Labour into No10. Bolstered by Cool Britannia and star power from Oasis and the Spice Girls – along with the aspiration that ‘things can only get better’ – Blair realised better than his policy-absorbed successor, Gordon Brown, how to catch both the vibes of the era and the attention of the media.
Barack Obama ascended to the White House in 2008 on the vibes of ‘hope’. And Donald Trump – in his own chaotic way – leveraged the algorithmic incentivisation of outrage in 2016 to mobilise supporters in rebuke of the establishment.
In a different sense, Keir Starmer recognised that the vibe leading into the general election this summer was for change and that policy detail was unimportant or could even get in the way. And in Scotland, ten years after the vibes of the independence referendum, the SNP is now facing an ‘anti-vibes’ period, following a carousel of controversies.
These examples all operate within unique contexts. But they illustrate that while a vibe-like political moment is typically stochastic, being able to harness it into something more requires a savvy understanding of the media. This is where the true skill of electoral strategy comes into play.
Marshall McLuhan, while witnessing the dawn of the television age and its effect on 1960s culture, asserted that “the medium is the message”. What McLuhan – a Canadian philosopher – pointed out is that the content of a message is influenced by the medium through which it’s transmitted, ultimately shaping society and even politics.
What’s happening in America now is an example of McLuhan’s theory in practice. Vice president Harris’s team is tapping into something that her own policy-absorbed political partner, Joe Biden, just couldn’t. Both she and running mate, governor Tim Walz, have capitalised on extrinsic vibes, in part, by leaning into TikToks and memes to reach new voters directly through the platforms where they consume news and information.
A case in point was the Harris campaign’s decision at the Democratic National Convention to give unprecedented special access to content creators – alongside traditional journalists – to reach vast social media audiences with intimate behind-the-scenes access and interviews, some with the candidate herself.
It’s just one facet of Harris’s strategy, but from an electoral standpoint, her grasp of today’s media landscape – and the subsequent mobilisation that’s emerging from it – is helping expand her pathways to beating Trump via a different coalition than Biden was reliant on.
This is backed by some compelling stats. The critical voting bloc of 18 to 29 year olds now support Harris over Trump by a margin of 18 points. And of those who support her overall, 60% say they do so strongly, compared to just 34% who strongly supported Biden when he was the candidate in July.More than half a billion dollars in campaign donations have flowed in since Harris took the helm of the ticket, many from small donors. And perhaps most importantly as an indicator of voting intention, voter registrations have surged in recent weeks – particularly among young Black women, up 175% over 2020.
That’s not to say that policy is completely subordinate or that the vibes of a moment can’t reverse course. It was only two years ago that the SNP under Nicola Sturgeon appeared an unstoppable force in Scottish politics. Vibes inevitably dissipate if not supported by delivery, a challenge Keir Starmer will also have to navigate.
This lifespan of any vibe moment is uncertain. Just as a surfer’s wave can fail to materialise, Kamala Harris could fizzle out before the November election or fail to materially challenge the MAGA machine. Maybe it is indeed a sugar high of sorts.
But like Blair’s ‘Cool Britannia’ or Obama’s ‘hope’ there’s a je ne sais quoito certain moments that stick out in history which some politicians find themselves well-equipped for. For the time being, and maybe with just enough time to go, Harris is riding the wave of her own moment by demonstrating an expert understanding of how today’s media works and the influence of new media platforms on the message she aims to deliver.
So far, she appears onto something that should be noted – even if the favourability of her wave’s crest is not yet fully known.