When things go kerflooey in American political life, the time is always right to reach for a dumb internet trope. Mostly harmless, these are needful distractions from difficult truths. So while the annals will remember this as a summer of reckonings with the nature of democracy, history’s footnotes may also record the Kamala Harris coconut tree meme.
Some background: Since early July, the internet (well, X; Instagram has given it a pass) has been abuzz with stories examining and professing to explain a meme involving the vice president and remarks she made a year ago quoting a comment her mother often made during her childhood.
“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,’” Ms. Harris said during a 2023 speech at a White House initiative on advancing educational equity for Hispanic people.
Dated without a doubt, the expression was not as incomprehensible as Gen Z commentators had it, its language vaguely Depression-era, when the generationally clueless were often said to have been found “under a cabbage leaf.”
When the online chattering classes from the opposition got hold of the clip, it quickly became part of an archive of mostly derogatory Harris kooky-isms — her uproarious and sometimes situationally inappropriate laugh, her dance moves and anecdotes that can seem inapt. Detractors pilloried her. Stans of the KHive hearted her for an individuality seldom on public display in public life.
As signs increasingly pointed toward a possible shift in the Democratic ticket — when it suddenly became possible that Ms. Harris would become the presidential nominee — all things related to her were suddenly resurfaced. And so it was inevitable that the Kamala Harris coconut tree piña colada would turn up on X as the “specialty cocktail of the summer” at Washington bars.
Of proof, there is none — though that may be irrelevant. Politics-themed tippling is a time-honored tradition in Washington. “As the quote goes, ‘It’s not the Democratic or the Republican Party,’” the beverage historian and longtime bartender at the Willard Hotel’s Round Robin bar once told Washingtonian magazine. “The most important party in Washington is the cocktail party.”
Given that Donald J. Trump is a teetotaler (as is President Biden), his administration was an oddly ripe one for Washington bartenders, who during his administration poured concoctions like Moscow Muellers and Dark ’n’ Stormy Daniels, and who even, for a time, promoted the cause of “making Absinthe great again.”
That Vice President Harris should now find herself associated with cheer is seen by some as a welcome point of inflection in a season that hasn’t featured much of it.
“I don’t think of it as a ‘Kamala Harris coconut piña colada summer,’” said Michael Franklin, the founder of the communications consultancy Words Normalize Behavior in Washington and who was named by Washington Life magazine one of the “movers and shakers” of 2024. “The opposition used that speech to cast the vice president as kooky. Now it’s being recast and endearingly meme-ified with coconut-inspired drinks of all kinds.”
Friends along Mr. Franklin’s extensive brunch circuit have already begun calling for pineapple coconut mimosas, coconut coolers and coconut margaritas. “Brunch is a big thing in D.C., especially when it comes to Black culture,” he said. For some in his friend cohort, a Kamala Harris coconut piña colada is more than a novelty drink.
“It’s a weird but fun entry point to politics for young folk, especially those that are chronically online,” Mr. Franklin said.
What the vice president herself thinks of this being a Kamala Harris coconut piña colada cocktail summer is unknown, though it is a safe bet the sweet blend of pineapple, rum and coconut juice would not be her bar order of choice. Maya Rudolph’s “Saturday Night Live” impersonations of Ms. Harris may feature martini glasses and frozen cocktails, but as The San Francisco Chronicle once reported, the Bay Area native likes California wine.
