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The Biden campaign is aiming to speak the language of youth by hiring someone to manage its content and meme pages, as the president’s reelection campaign struggles to connect with Gen Z voters.
In a job posting on Daybook, the campaign is looking to hire a partner to manage the campaign’s internet content, including memes.
Memes have played a big part in how presidential candidates have tried to get the word out about their campaigns.
The Biden campaign has lovingly adopted “Dark Brandon,” a meme that portrays an alter-ego of President Biden that was created after a reporter misheard chants of “F—- Joe Biden” as “Let’s Go, Brandon” as she was interviewing race winner Brandon Brown at the Talladega racetrack for the Xfinity series in 2021.
What started as a way for Biden haters to criticize the president eventually led to the Biden campaign leaning into the meme and embracing it. The profile picture for the Biden-Harris HQ page on X is the Dark Brandon picture, which shows Mr. Biden with red lasers shooting out of his eyes.
Most recently, Mr. Biden posted the Dark Brandon image after the Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl. It was meant as a joke about a conspiracy theory that he would rig the contest for the Chiefs to win, which would lead to a Biden endorsement from pop star Taylor Swift, who is dating Chiefs’ player Travis Kelce.
“Just like we drew it up,” the post on X said in February.
Mr. Biden’s X account trolled former President Donald Trump with a meme posted just last week. To celebrate the Dow Jones Industrial Average cracking the 40,000 mark for the first time in history, the Biden campaign posted a video of Mr. Trump during a 2020 debate predicting the stock market would crash if Mr. Biden won the election.
Mr. Biden reposted the video from his personal account and added a meme of himself holding an ice cream cone serving an “L” or “loss” to Mr. Trump.
The Trump campaign has dished out its fair share of memes as well.
The adoption of memes could be seen as a way to engage with Gen Z voters, the youngest group that can vote in the upcoming election. Mr. Biden is struggling to reach the demographic.
A CNN poll from late April showed that Mr. Trump leads Mr. Biden among younger voters ages 18-34 by 11 percentage points in a head-to-head matchup, even though younger voters typically lean Democratic.
Many believe the driving force behind decreased support from young voters stems from Mr. Biden’s response to the Israel-Hamas war. A Pew Research Center survey from February found that one-third of adults under 30 say they sympathize either entirely or mostly with the Palestinian people, while 14% say their sympathies lie with Israel.
There has been unrest on college campuses across the country, with students getting arrested, over U.S. support for Israel.
Mr. Biden’s recent ban on the social media app TikTok if the Chinese-owned app doesn’t sell to an American company has also been unfavorable among younger voters. One-third of U.S. adults use TikTok, according to a Pew Research Center study in February. It is particularly popular with adults ages 18-34, the center said.
Rep. Maxwell Frost, Florida Democrat and the youngest and first member of Gen Z to be elected to Congress, said in March that banning TikTok wouldn’t “be helpful with young voters.”
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