Call it a crude comparison, but President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race and endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee last month called to mind Beyoncé’s left-field self-titled album drop in 2013. There was a surprise, there was fevered excitement, there was a kind of coronation and a whole lot of discussion. Overnight, Harris went from the presumptive number two, dismissed by her fellow Dems, to the great new hope of the party — with a good shot at the White House.
The past three weeks have been a honeymoon period for the burgeoning campaign: The donations are rolling in, Harris has eclipsed her rival in earned media, and the memes have been plentiful and — though they toe the line — have not fully crossed over into cringe territory yet. It’s a momentum that Harris and the Democrats want to see beyond the likely peak of all this good press: when she accepts the presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention next week.
Her momentum is also powered, in part, by sidestepping the press and eschewing other traditional forms of media. In this short amount of time, we’ve gotten to know Harris as a pop culture fixture, but we have yet to get a true sense of the ways her governing style and policy substance are similar and different from the current commander in chief.
At the time of this publishing, there’s no policy platform on her website. And her packed rallies offer feel-good Democratic talking points, and she talks broadly about her values and goals, but offers few details and no real plan of action for making things happen. What is her plan for a ceasefire in Gaza? Why no taxes on tips? Does she plan to sign an executive order regarding abortion rights, or attempt to work with Congress over the matter?
In the hectic early days of her campaign, Harris is acting as a mirror: she’s reflecting the desires of those who will vote for her, allowing a broad range of voters — including some with contradictory opinions — to see in her what they want to. It’s a tactic that works, and the best example of where it can take you is the woman behind Harris’s campaign song: Beyoncé.
What Beyoncé teaches us about effective PR
In many ways, a comparison between Kamala Harris, a presidential candidate, and Beyoncé, a multihyphenate musical icon, can feel like apples and oranges. One woman is a public servant, the other holds the record for winning the most awards from the Recording Academy. But if the 21st-century political landscape has taught us anything, it’s that for better or worse, politics often function similarly to the world of celebrity. It can at times be difficult to discern if people are talking about their favorite fandom or their candidate of choice.
For a long time, Beyoncé has been notoriously tight-lipped with the press, instead bypassing them to communicate directly with her fans via album releases and limited social media. It’s been years since she has given a traditional television interview with a journalist, and her elusive relationship with the press has been one of many examples of the decline of the celebrity profile, once considered an A-lister staple. Now, Harris is employing the same strategy.
It’s likely no coincidence that the Harris campaign asked for permission to use the song “Freedom,” a track that appeared on Beyoncé’s Lemonade, arguably her magnum opus. It’s the singer’s most issue-oriented album and has been read as a kind of manifesto by many (especially on the right). Those who operate outside the Beyhive’s watchful eye may not have been as dialed into her references to relaxers on B’Day a decade prior, and for many in the public Lemonade’s release was a thematic turning point. Gone was the hopeful pop princess who demurred political questions. Beyoncé was Black now. And not just in the cool way. In a real, political sense. Even Saturday Night Live took notice of the shift.
In the music video for “Formation,” the album’s lead single, a young boy with his hood up dances in front of a line of police officers, raising his hands in defiance. Law enforcement follows suit, and then the camera pans to a wall that reads “Stop killing us.” The video closes with Beyoncé perched atop a cop car, sinking into water as if being baptized. The video came out in a post-Trayvon Martin, post-Mike Brown world: For the first time, people whose anxiety doesn’t inherently prickle when pulled over for a traffic stop had to reckon with the experiences of those who do. These were the days before black squares on Instagram, back when uttering that Black lives matter could get you fired from your job rather than a promotion in the C-suite. In a country awakening to racial consciousness from a deep slumber, the video’s messaging seemed clear.
Still, just as Beyoncé was hitting audiences with a stark message, she was also saying a lot less than it might have seemed. On Lemonade and the albums following, Beyoncé largely gestured toward the work of womanists (a term for Black feminists coined by Alice Walker) who came before her, never outright saying what she believed. This strategy gives listeners just enough to project their desires (and frustrations) onto her, but rarely confirms or denies if that thinking is correct.
One of Beyoncé and Kamala Harris’s other similarities is a little more obvious: They’re both Black women. And much to the frustration of those who don’t engage with race as a social construct and those who do, it’s an identity that comes with a lot to navigate. A common phrase a Black child will hear over and over as they make their way into adulthood is “you have to be twice as good to get half as far.” There is no room for error.
Public life means mistakes are inevitable. Definitive statements can be a poison pill; when they know exactly what you believe, people respond, for better and for worse. By keeping quiet, Beyoncé has been able to (mostly) avoid the accusations that come with being a Black woman with a platform and something to say: too angry, too loud, too much. When you are taught you have to be twice as good to get half as far, you learn that quietness and the respectability people assign to it can push you the other 50 percent across the finish line.
That makes silence a shrewd choice for a pop star in an era of oversharing and social media apologies; an old Hollywood move that still lands in a time when talking keeps you in the zeitgeist and controversy is capital. It’s more complicated for a potential president.
Why this strategy just isn’t acceptable in politics — no matter what Trump does
Harris, by the nature of her job, can’t avoid the media completely — but, of late, it’s not for lack of trying. The occasional and quick post-event gaggle aside, she has as of yet to hold a press conference or sit down with a journalist for an interview since she’s become the presumptive nominee. It is very obvious that Harris would rather talk to voters directly than go through the press.
There’s a key difference: While the public might beg for it, a critically acclaimed entertainer in no way owes us her stance on hot-button issues. A politician, especially one asking to be installed in the most powerful office in the nation, should explain to the public why she wants that power and what she intends to do with it. And the public is better off (or, at least, better informed) when that candidate has to defend the vision in the face of media scrutiny.
Under normal circumstances, this kind of pointed non-specificity would only work for an entertainer. Past Democratic primaries have forced candidates to get specific about their policy plans, as they try to convince voters that they’re the best choice to carry the party’s banner. And in a crowded field, candidates willingly subject themselves to media interviews in the hopes of grabbing voters’ attention.
That proved problematic for Harris during her first presidential campaign. We saw her attempt to toe this line in 2019 during her ill-fated presidential campaign. Time and again, she was asked her stance on policing, and each time she appeared surprisingly discombobulated, a funhouse mirror version of the woman we saw go viral for her tough questions in senate hearings. She told us her views had evolved since she was the top cop in California, but couldn’t tell us how or why or even when.
But this is no normal election: Harris got to skip the primary entirely.
With the traditional primary campaign made moot and enthusiasm at an incredible high, it could be appealing for Harris to, like the “Freedom” singer, run off vibes alone and let the stans handle things — they’re called the KHive, after all. Like Beyoncé, she’s aware that there are critics lying in wait. And yes, some of those pundits and X users don’t have a more nuanced point than “she’s a DEI candidate.” But as a politician with actual power over the laws that govern our lives, those proverbial haters are far from the only Americans she has to answer to. (It’s worth noting, Harris doesn’t point to race and identity as often as Beyoncé – or even as often as Barack Obama – it’s not 2008 after all; it’s unlikely we need A Race Speech, despite Trump’s attempt at bringing online diaspora wars to real life.) Harris has to be prepared to tell the people what she thinks, and hear what we have to say in return.
Perhaps it’s a standard that feels unfair when you look at who Harris is up against. It feels like there’s no meat on the bones of former President Donald Trump’s agenda. When pressed about Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation-linked plan for a second Trump administration that was put together by people with close, close ties to the former president — Trump has been remarkably evasive: He says he supports some parts of the plan and opposes others, but won’t say which. Trump’s refusal to be forthright about his own policies, and his penchant for lying about his achievements when he does discuss his record, has made him so difficult to pin down that many have given up. They no longer want to expend the energy on what will likely become a mess of an interview and a waste of a news cycle.
Yes, being expected to be “twice as good” is generally unfair, and when taken to the extreme can lead to this kind of paralysis of speech. But Trump’s malfeasance is so extreme that asking Harris to do much better still isn’t asking for all that much. Of course people are holding Harris to a higher standard. If anyone should actually be twice as good, it should be the president of the United States of America.
Harris’s fumbling isn’t because of a lack of ability. She’s a former prosecutor. She went to one of the top HBCUs in the country, a place that has gestated politicians and activists and tastemakers across the political spectrum since its inception (and where your author went). She is more than capable of making a case to the American people. The question now is: Will she?
