TikToks, podcast interviews, and memes have been plaguing the US presidential election this year, and Kamala Harris took it one step further by going on Call Her Daddy. Why does it feel so inauthentic and a cheap grab at Gen Z?
With the US presidential election almost over, we can reflect on the heavy rollout of media interviews and attention grabs from the presidential candidates in hopes of securing more votes.
Throughout this time, it has been no shock that candidates will go the extra mile to be relatable, trying to target the younger generation (18-24) who statistically vote less than older generations.
Fans of the podcast Call Her Daddy, the “Daddy Gang”, were shocked to wake up to a 40-minute episode with host Alexandra Cooper and presidential candidate & vice president Kamala Harris.
Diverting from her usual Sunday solo sessions advising about relationships, sex or flashback Friday episodes, Cooper instead discussed the overturning of Roe v Wade and its effect on women’s rights, student debt and obtaining debt relief, and Harris’s history as a District Attorney in California.
Unsurprisingly, this episode sparked backlash against Cooper and Harris individually. Many thought Cooper diverted from her usual topics and shifted from her politics-free nature to push an agenda, while others felt that the Call Her Daddy platform had an inappropriate reputation and was unparalleled to Harris’s personality.
Brian Stelter explains Call Her Daddy to viewers: "It's usually about s*x and relationships. Sometimes risqué — even raunchy conversations about s*x."
— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) October 6, 2024
This is what Kamala was doing while North Carolinians were suffering. pic.twitter.com/BR15pr1ZTh
This said reputation comes from the origins of Call Her Daddy as a sex advice and confessional podcast with Alex Cooper and her roommate, Sofia Franklyn, who had a viral episode called “The Gluck Gluck 3000”, giving fans the recipe for the best blowjob.
Sofia left the podcast in 2020 due to contract disagreements with Alex and their former host network, Barstool Sports, and it was aired all over the internet.
Nevertheless, Call Her Daddy thrived with Cooper as the sole host, with her obtaining a three-year $60 million (£46.2m) exclusive deal with Spotify in July 2021, which only transcended the podcast further.
Since then, Call Her Daddy has become the “go-to” podcast for celebrities to air their grievances and give raunchy sex confessions, with the likes of Katy Perry, Avril Lavine and even Zayn Malik breaking his six-year absence from interviews on the podcast.
Cooper shifted her podcast to also incorporate heavier topics, more specifically women’s rights in 2022, by doing a video podcast episode, “An Abortion Story”, which documented Cooper visiting an abortion clinic which was infested with pro-life protesters outside. She spoke to the protestors as well as some of those who have had abortions and workers in the clinic.
Cooper confessed she was on the fence about accepting the interview, stating, “I do not usually discuss politics or have politicians on the show because I want to Call Her Daddy to be a place where everyone feels comfortable.
“I’ll be honest; I had been going back and forth with this decision for a while … but at the end of the day, I could not see a world in which one of the main conversations in this election is women, and I am not apart of it,” she said at the start of the episode.
While it seems odd for Kamala Harris to be on a sex advice podcast to discuss her policies and experiences, it is quite strategic as Call Her Daddy was the 4th most popular podcast in the U.S in Q1 2024, according to Edison Research with 70% of the audience being women and 93% of those women being under 45 according to NPR.
However, the stark contrast of Alex Cooper sitting in sweatpants while having Kamala Harris in her staple suit essentially alludes to how clashing the interview can feel for Gen Z.
Cooper’s casual nature seemingly makes it feel like the audience should not take this interview seriously because who even knew a Vice President could have a professional interview in a hotel room with someone in sweatpants.
In dissecting Kamala Harris’s appearance on Call Her Daddy, we spoke to two Gen-Z voters to get their opinions on her appearance and her candidacy.
Stella St. John, an American studying in the UK described the appearance as shocking as “it seemed like such an un-presidential thing to do. I remember the vulgar and sometimes demeaning language that was used on that podcast when it first began, and I couldn’t imagine any interview platform so apolitical.”
Nevertheless, Stella understands the choice, citing “I understand Call Her Daddy has undergone an extensive rebranding process and divorced itself from its early reputation … the interview may have been a good move by Harris’ team, because it likely allowed Harris to speak directly to people who are usually uninvolved in politics. In an election that’s projected to be as close as this one is, winning undecided voters this way is extremely important.”
Rhian Jones a student at The University of Southern California commented on the landscape of the election citing “I feel like this whole election was TV based emulating that reality television style. It featured a lot of performance-based campaigning, with Donald Trump being a TV personality and businessman at his core.
“His whole platform and campaign is around him being a personality and a charismatic individual and hers [Kamala Harris] as well, she’s incredibly charismatic. I think people like her because she seems genuine and is a laugh like she likes to laugh she’s like me she’s like normal people in her character and her ability to translate that has worked for people.”
Undoubtedly, both sides have been targeting the younger demographic with Donald Trump doing an interview with Logan Paul, a 29-year-old internet personality, on his podcast called Inpaulsive.
Paul’s audience consists mainly of Gen Z and Gen Alpha people, particularly young boys under 24. Logan Paul is not without his faults, as he was criticised worldwide for recording a dead body hanging from a tree in a suicide forest in Japan at the end of 2017.
However, the brand of Logan Paul has always been right-leaning without apologies, therefore being a perfect fit for Trump to target the younger voters.
The media environment has drastically changed over the years, and particularly with younger voters, they are less prone to turn on CNN and other news outlets to obtain their political information.
The younger generation is more informed about media bias and agenda-setting, which is prominent among politicians. They have more mistrust in these politicians and in the media, challenging how presidential campaigns are carried out, with many hiring Gen Z to run social media accounts to make it feel more “authentic”.
Mirroring the same sentiments, Stella says: “I do not feel as though the Harris campaign’s social media activity feels true to Kamala Harris’ identity so much as it feels like the typical posting of a Gen Z social media manager, but I think that’s to be expected since social media has become such a powerful marketing and publicity tool. It feels like a slightly innovated version of the same kind of social media management we’ve seen for several campaigns in the past few years.”
Contrastingly, Rhian expresses that her social media campaign is “authentic enough to her character because it’s working for liberals, moderates and honestly republicans to change their viewpoints on certain things.
“Honestly when you look at her policies, they are not as left-leaning as people think they are. Climate change actually hasn’t been one of the things she’s talked about which is really interesting because you’d think that’s a big issue that people would cover….. but I feel like social media has been a driving point of her campaign and trying to reach Gen Z voters.”
Based on Rhian’s thoughts, Kamala Harris focusing so heavily on reproductive rights and potentially being the first woman as president, she has ultimately neglected voters who focus on climate change and critiquing US military operations, particularly with the genocide in Gaza, which could ultimately cost her the election.
Many young voters critique her for the blatant mishandling of the Gaza genocide, with many having their qualms with her ignorance of the situation and finding her complacency deafening.
“I think she’s done an incredibly poor job of handling [The Gaza Genocide] you’ve been in the white house for four years now you’ve been vice president and you’ve had a year to hear what people think about this matter and it’s not trivial that Israel is indiscriminately bombing one of the most densely populated places on the planet. It’s not an opinion it’s a fact,” Rhian states.
“They are exterminating people in Gaza, they are indiscriminately starving these people and it’s a fact that the U.S.A is complicit in this. it’s a fact she compares genocide to raising the price of groceries.”
Her recklessness in this issue alongside the Biden administration has lost her valuable votes, with some people wanting to “send a message”, by punishing the “the evil we know” versus “picking the lesser evil”, which could essentially hand Donald Trump the win in Michigan, which is home to over 200,000 Arab and Muslim Americans, according to the Washington Examiner.
Likewise with Gen Z, Kamala Harris did an interview with Charlamagne tha God, a radio host, part of the Breakfast Club show which reaches over eight million listeners, who are predominantly black.
During the interview, her answers felt like “fitting a square peg into a round hole,” rather than truly connecting with the Black community and their immediate concerns of homelessness and bettering the lives of the poor and working class, where “black communities are disproportionately represented,” said Shamira Ibrahim in The Guardian.
Ultimately, it feels as though Harris’s campaign has highlighted popular media hubs for specific communities and made it a point to reach there to garner relatability votes.
But in the effort to become relatable to Gen Z, they have relegated us to being trend-obsessed, utilizing “Kamala is Brat” and every trending Tik Tok sound possible rather than engaging with our political frameworks and thoughts.
“I don’t think they actually listen to anything that our generation is saying because they think we’re young and naive which is not true. I think we’re honestly quite educated on what’s going on and I don’t think they take us seriously as voters they kind of think we’re silly,” Rhian concluded.
Featured image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr CC