Identity groups fuel an online groundswell for Kamala Harris' campaign

Five members of a crowd clapping, one raising a fist, all pictured from below under the ceiling and lights of a large venue

July 30, 2024 2:12 PM PT

Disabled voters for Harris. White dudes for Harris. Crazy cat ladies for Harris.

Since Vice President Kamala Harris vaulted into becoming the likely Democratic nominee for president a week ago, a groundswell of identity-based grassroots groups have sprung up online to rally behind her. The nightly calls are raising millions of dollars and securing hundreds of volunteers, drawing comparisons to the grassroots efforts that fueled former President Obama to victory in 2008.

But in 2024, in an era when identity shapes so much of politics, the rise of the first Black woman and first Asian American to be nominated for president by a major party is drawing more identity groups out of the woodwork.

“This is unprecedented diversity in the political pool,” said Pei-Te Lien, a professor in UC Santa Barbara’s Politics of Identity program. “That’s another reason why ‘identity group’ comes up, because we also see identity being recognized and used as leverage in the campaigns, in an unprecedented level.”

Within hours after President Biden announced he would not seek reelection and endorsed Harris as his replacement nominee, more than 44,000 Black women and allies from across the country gathered online, raising over $1.5 million, according to organizers. The template for that event, organized by Win With Black Women, was repeated the next day by Win With Black Men, which organizers said brought 45,000 Black men and raised $1.3 million.

“It’s organic,” said Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who attended a Zoom call for South Asians supporting Harris last week. “I think people are clear-eyed about what this moment means. I think they just feel a sense of hope that we actually could defeat Trump, and we could do it with a candidate that reflects the America that all these immigrants live in.”

With fewer than 100 days to the election and a new candidate leading the Democratic Party, the flood of groups — including Latino Men for Harris, Caribbean-Americans for Harris, Dads for Kamala and Native Women + Two Spirit for Harris — are motivated by a “sense of crisis,” Lien said.

“They feel like we are not in the mainstream — we are not able to have too much influence,” she said. “But we feel like we need to do our share to be able to help change the course. To prevent, basically, the coming apocalypse or whatever.”

Former President Trump has pointedly courted Black and Latino voters this year, and has been drawing greater support from minority groups than he did in his previous two campaigns. But fewer identity-based groups are organized for Republicans.

When white women took to Zoom last week to support the Democrat, a technical glitch forced the livestream to abruptly end just a few minutes after it began. Later, organizers found out why in a message from Zoom: “You are officially hosting the Zoom webinar with the most registrants in our history!”

“Kamala Harris broke Zoom!” one of the hosts exclaimed.

Some of the white women who had logged on said the idea of supporting Kamala Harris as an identity group was necessary and empowering. But it was also uncomfortable.

“I have to admit: When I was writing stuff down, I was like, ‘Karens for Kamala’?” said Connie Britton, the actor who played Tami Taylor on “Friday Night Lights.” “Why is it so difficult for us to acknowledge and address ourselves as white women?”

The “White Dudes for Harris” call Monday, which 193,000 people attended, shared similar self-consciousness.

“What a variety of whiteness,” actor Bradley Whitford quipped. “It’s like a rainbow of beige.”

Ross Morales Rocketto, the group’s lead organizer, said a lot of people expressed discomfort about the concept of White Dudes for Harris. He understood their qualms: “Throughout American history, when white men have organized, it was often with pointy hats on.”

“The reason we are doing this is because the left has been ceding white men to the MAGA right for way, way too long,” Rocketto said, noting that Trump had won more than 60% of white men in 2016 and 2020. “That’s going to stop tonight. We know that the silent majority of white men aren’t actually MAGA supporters.”

But other attendees, such as Jeff Bridges — who played the Dude in the “The Big Lebowski” — wore their White Dudes for Harris hats with pride.

“A friend sent me this email today with your hat on there, and I said, ‘Oh, I gotta have one of those. I qualify ... I’m white, I’m a dude, and I’m for Harris,’” Bridges said.

The group drew negative attention and mockery from conservatives.

“They should give it a more fitting name,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote on X. “Like Cucks for Kamala.”

Before Shannon Watts, the activist and founder of gun control group Moms Demand Action, organized the white women’s meeting, she called Jotaka Eaddy, organizer of the Black women’s Zoom, seeking her counsel.

“She told me that white women did need to come together as a community to do the work,” Watts said. “Because our work is very different.”

In addition to recognizing their privilege, railing against white supremacy and patriarchy, navigating the toxicity of online politics and offering practical pointers on campaigning, the more than 164,000 women who gathered online raised $2 million in 90 minutes. The white men’s call raised $4.2 million.

“Many white people don’t want to be identified with that white guy,” said Lien, the UCSB professor. “Identity matters only because they don’t want to be lumped together in the same camp as ... white supremacists.”

Christopher Parker, a professor of political science at UC Santa Barbara, pointed to the 2016 election, when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — then the first woman to lead the Democratic ticket — lost to Trump. By 2020, he said, Democrats had coalesced behind Biden, but “were more voting against Trump than for Biden.”

Harris enjoys a double advantage, according to Parker: voters enthused by her as a candidate and voters who are anti-Trump.

“People got it right in 2020 that it was about an existential threat that Trump posed,” he said. “You have that here, but you also have this excitement over her candidacy and what she represents symbolically, and what she can do when it comes to policy.”

The Harris campaign has mostly hung back from directly engaging with the various group calls, except when Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff surprised a Black gay and queer men’s group by joining a call last week.

On Tuesday, Harris announced she would be headlining a “National Organizing Call” — open to all identities.