As Joe Biden announced he would be ending his bid for re-election, and endorsed Kamala Harris as his successor in the presidential contest, social media did what social media is best known to do.
Truth to be told, social media users had been enthusiastically imagining Harris’s ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket since Biden’s disastrous debate performance at the end of June. Harris dancing. Harris laughing. Clips resurfaced and were remixed of Harris telling a story in 2023, about her mother saying to her as a child: “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?”, with Harris adding: “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.” It became an instant meme at the time. “The arc of the coconut tree is long, but it bends towards justice,” one person tweeted following Biden’s announcement.
