First, a significant shift in media influence is underway. TikTok and Instagram are emerging as the most influential and powerful sources of information and cultural insights, even overshadowing the disgruntled traditional media.
They are also mighty cultural and political forces.
Kamala Harris has yet to give one of those “essential” interviews to a prominent media outlet. Yet many of the country’s most potent media “influencers” have been invited to Chicago and the convention to sit in their boxes with computers, cameras, and refreshments provided.
They are in the best seats in the house, high up with fantastic views where people like Walter Cronkite used to sit.
For the first time, the D.N.C. has granted credentials to more than 200 social media influencers and given them a unique “creator platform” within the convention venue in the United Center, a special V.I.P. Box directly above the arena floor.
We have crossed the line, and welcome to the new world. Five influencers have been invited to speak alongside Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi during the convention.
Convention officials said each night would feature at least one influencer speech. The speakers are Deja Foxx, Nabela Noor, Carlos Eduardo Espina, Olivia Julianna, and John Russell, millennial and Gen Z influencers who collectively have well over 24 million social media followers.
A stark contrast is evident when you compare the content on TikTok and Instagram with the convention coverage on television. Our mainstream media are reluctantly and grudgingly beginning to acknowledge this reality, to their discomfort and unhappiness. Instead, they go after Harris for not giving the traditional interviews to the press.
The energy, creativity, and passion on TikTok are amazing to see. Harris is a rock star all over.
Nobody cares except Donald Trump and JD Vance.
You have to wonder if these people live in caves far underground.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that the questions posed by the media rarely align with the people’s concerns.
The Republicans are beginning to realize that the future lies with the younger generation, who are rekindling their interest in politics., and with women who don’t like to see other women abused, verbally or physically. They have a loser in command.
The pundits have been suggesting for weeks that the war in Gaza will tear the democratic coalition to pieces. Polls show the war in Gaza is on no one’s list of how they will choose their president.
I’ve been saying for a year or so now that women hold the key to this election. You’ll see what I mean if you watch those faces in the United Arena. I don’t need a poll.
I’ll amend that to add that women and younger people are now the keys to the magic that seems to follow Harris and her oddly charming and loving Teddy Bear of a vice presidential candidate.
I would so prefer to hear Governor Walz invite me for coffee or visit the farm that JD Vance, another catastrophic blunder by the ever-politically inept Trump.
Trump, like Biden before him, is disintegrating before our eyes. We know the signs, from ranting incoherently to stumbling on his own words. And the lies get worse and worse.
His addiction to insulting people is overshadowing any sensible political judgment. He can’t stop saying offensive things, while his opponent can’t stop having fun, laughing, and smiling. For the first time, his crowds are markedly smaller than hers.
He is losing his mojo and magic, wasting time looking for the one insult or odd name that will ruin Harris and her campaign. His “press conferences” are as painful to watch as Joe Biden’s were.
It isn’t going to happen, Mr. Trump. She works in a different world than you; you are more and more like your one-time favorite target, Jo Biden, every day. He at least had the guts to acknowledge reality and leave the stage.
You are not into grace.
Trump is folding under the pressure of the one thing he can’t abide: losing and losing to women. That is becoming more and more apparent by the day. Harris doesn’t fly as a lefty/Marxist/Extremist dummy.
It isn’t entirely clear what she is, but it is increasingly clear what she isn’t—any bad name Trump can think of. Women are more excited by her and making a new history. That glass ceiling is breaking apart.
Nobody under 60 seems to care whether or not Harris ever gives an interview to the increasingly irrelevant mainstream media; the “press,” as they were once called, has become almost irrelevant.
The Influencers sitting up in their well-equipped boxes together have followers of nearly 30 million people, almost all of them young. Thousands and thousands of them are signing up to work for Harris’s campaign.
The long-awaited women’s revolution takes form and shape.
They have their influencer in Harris. The far right messed up badly by dumping Roe Vs. Wade had been an established right and protection for half a century.
What they did was spark a revolution. And yes, they are not going back.
Women all over the country are making it clear that they will no longer put up with nasty old white men and Christian nationalists telling them how they must live and what children they must or must not have.
You don’t need to be a pundit to know that a women’s revolution is underway, and it is more significant than red and blue. The chilly Hillary Clinton gets it, of course, and described it powerfully and beautifully on Monday night in Chicago. She gave one of the most powerful speeches I have ever heard.
It’s a cliche in a way, but it has stuck. These women are not going back, and there are enough of them to swing the election to Kamala Harris if they show up. They will show up if you watch the reception Harris is getting nationwide. I am 77 years old and have never seen anything like it.
Trump doesn’t have enough time to brand her as an ugly, stupid, Marxist lunatic. His statement that he is better looking than he is is yet another silly sexist bit of chest-thumping that will cost him even more of the very voters he most needs – moderate, suburban, and middle-class women.
He just made another million enemies on TikTok and Instagram, and they will be poking him and making fun of him to the end.
While the pundits were buty e-mailing each other for clues as to what was happening,
Harris was skipping the intermediaries and talking to a new coalition of followers. Just go on TikTok or Instagram. She doesn’t need stuffy interviews; she has been talking to millions of people for weeks, perhaps even months.
Wait until Taylor Swift and Beyonce show up to sing a song or two to Kamala Harris. The performance will be filmed live on commercial television and go viral on social media, the most influential media of all. You’ll hear the cheers from Chicago wherever you are.
Have Trump and his nationalist buddies ever looked more out of it?
I’ll say it once more: women will decide this revolution. And the revolution is here.
Even pundits are beginning to see that something extraordinary is unfolding before our eyes: a bloodless revolution that will rock the nation and perhaps much of the world. I’m in.
I want to see this convention and every bit of it. This is not something I will likely see in the rest of my life, and it is not something I have ever seen.
Is anything as exciting as watching history unfold right before our eyes?
