The Democratic party was relieved when President Joe Biden withdrew his run for reelection, and the American political scene quickly changed. At the same time, the campaign of his successor started to take form. A lot of things felt like they had been in previous election cycles: the constant emails, texts, or both, and the canvassing. To raise money for Vice President Kamala Harris’ fledgling campaign, an evening event on July 29 on Zoom brought together, in the words of a well-known speaker, a “rainbow of beige” men. Among them were nearly a dozen A-list Hollywood celebrities and prominent political figures.
The “White Dudes For Harris” Zoom meeting was a feel-good, self-aware round robin of well-known men from L.A. and D.C. speaking passionately about Harris in turn (Sean Astin’s speech stood out on this front); about being a white man (Jeff Bridges, aka “the Dude,” told viewers he is just a white man who supports Harris); about how everyone should be afraid of a second Trump administration; and about how awkward it was to be among other white men (“[The meeting] does not sound like something I would usually join, but this is a great cause,” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker joked).
In just a few days, the three-hour and twenty-minute Zoom was put together, and as word spread about the impending event, celebrities were drawn in by what organizer Ross Morales Rocketto refers to as “a virtuous cycle.” A few celebrities, like Mark Hamill, happened to see the listing and were contacted to talk with the group through their representatives. It transpires that Bridges joined the team only thirty minutes before the event and was requested to give the opening speech. According to the event’s organizers, over 200,000 people attended, with 51 percent of them viewing from battleground states. The event reached voters across the country.
The enormously popular event, a fundraising call catered to one of several splinter factions inside the U.S. electorate, demonstrated how identity politics will continue to dominate this election year. Identity in politics is sometimes exploited as a means of denigration and disdain, as the remarks made by Republican presidential contender Donald Trump regarding Kamala Harris’ race recently demonstrated. However, with this and several other Zoom meetings, its innate strength is being used to organize and energize the electorate in concert with now-mainstreamed communications technology.
According to Rocketto, who talked with The Hollywood Reporter, this organizational strategy may be awkward or even “a bit weird” when applied to a bunch of self-described “white males.” However, with Trump’s broad appeal to the white male population, it will be critical for the Democrats in 2024. Edison Research’s exit polling data from 2016 and 2020 indicates that more than 60% of white men voted MAGA. Additionally, during an interview with THR, political strategist Rocketto—who also sponsored the “White Dudes for Harris” Zoom event—noted that the Democrats had given white males less time and attention throughout the previous 25 to 30 years.
“This has been a gradual thing,” Rocketto explained. “A lot of that has to do with the fact that on the left, we often think in binaries. So either we go after white men or we go after women, people of color, Black women. And the answer is: We have to do both.”
Naturally, in order to win elections, Democrats have put together a varied and dispersed coalition for decades. According to Rocketto, the idea for “White Dudes for Harris” came about as a result of his observation of “Win With Black Women’s” popularity, which has been holding Zoom meetings on Sunday nights for the past four years. The group emerged from the anger that many Black women experienced in 2020 over the inadequate handling of the pool of Black candidates that Biden had been considering for his vice presidential nominee. The “Win With Black Women” Zoom event collected almost $1.6 million for Harris on July 20, the day Biden’s campaign concluded. These Sunday Zoom sessions go on for hours as participants strategize and locate support.
According to Jotaka Eaddy, the founder of Win With Black Women, it is “powerful and wonderful to see” how the Sunday Zooms, which she launched four years ago, have inspired and ignited a grassroots movement for Harris among a wide range of voters. She clarified that Harris is the only candidate with whom Win With Black Women would have even entertained a discussion about stepping up following Biden’s departure.
“We welcome it. For so many years, Black women have always, as people have described, been the backbone of our communities and of the Democratic Party. Our voting block speaks volumes at 91 percent,” she said. “We are in a moment in this country where Black women are taking their rightful place in this country. But also, as Black women are in this space, we very much are doing it in a way that sets the table so everybody has a seat at the table.”
Rooted in the unity seen with “Win With Black Women,” the White Dudes’ gathering was a massive success that brought in over $4 million. And from there, the Zoom movement has grown. There was the July 31 “Latino Men for Harris” gathering hosted by comic actor George Lopez. Then there was “Comics for Kamala” on Aug. 5, which brought dozens of comedy favorites together virtually to riff for Harris, with Nick Offerman’s barn-burner parody song “Proud to be a Kamala Man” (sung to the tune of “God Bless the USA,” aka “Proud to Be an American”) being a major highlight. At the same time, on a separate meeting, the “Elders for Harris” Zoom had Jane Fonda telling her age demo, “It’s not just because the orange man is terrible, it’s because Kamala is the leader we need right now.” Coming up next: “Cat Ladies for Harris,” a call formed in reaction to a recent insult that GOP Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance hurled at Harris; “Rural Americans for Harris”; and yup, “Deadheads for Harris,” which takes place on the day of the late Grateful Dead frontman’s birth.
Trump gained notoriety in politics about ten years ago, partly due to his adept use of Twitter. Given that campaigning requires an awareness of the current media landscape and that mastery of these landscapes can translate into victory, it is certain that 2024 will quickly become The Zoom Election. Rocketto refers to a piece of videotelephony software that many experienced as a source of unity during the COVID-19 pandemic (but also as a source of exhaustion) as the new “appointment television.”
“This is different from 2020. Because when the pandemic hit, people weren’t used to Zoom. They weren’t used to doing things through calls. Four years later, the idea of getting on Zoom, not having to leave your house, doesn’t feel foreign to people anymore,” he said. “There’s still a time and a place for it. And I think this taps into something where hundreds of thousands of people are getting on at the same time to be in the same place, and even though people couldn’t see each other, they felt like they were having a community experience.”
Although Team Trump’s campaign has not yet moved to Zoom, it did make progress toward livestreaming on August 5 when the candidate joined internet celebrity Adin Ross for a conversation on Kick. At one point during the live, the 23-year-old helped Trump receive more than 580,000 views. He has already interviewed controversial figures like white supremacist Nick Fuentes and regularly streams himself playing video games on his Kick page. It remains to be seen if this will result in his campaign adopting the format and media.
Zoom, for its part, would do well to stay abreast of the public’s desire to attend these gatherings. The “White Women: Answer the Call 2024” meeting “broke” Zoom last week, with so many people attending that the company’s engineers had to increase the capacity to 200,000 for the first time. The attendance exceeded the largest corporate package available. For his White Dudes call, Rocketto came up with a classy solution to this problem by simultaneously streaming the event on a YouTube page, drawing in over 200,000 spectators. He later told THR that an additional 450,000 people had watched the Zoom there.
Rocketto claims that these Zoom gatherings can foster a strong feeling of community, which if maintained, could help propel the stunted and unproven Harris campaign to victory. Maybe the 2024 MAGA rallies will be Zooms for Harris. It should be highlighted that the Harris campaign will receive the monies raised by the Zoom meetings without any assistance from her team, even if it may not be able to count on the billions in free media attention that were directed towards such rallies, helping Trump’s 2016 campaign.
The cash boost is already apparent: Just three Zoom events — “White Dudes for Harris,” “Win With Black Women” and “White Women: Answer the Call” — raised $16 million, helping to push her campaign’s July haul to $310 million, more than doubling Trump’s $138.7 for the same period. And, according to an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll released on Tuesday, Harris now holds a 51-48 percent national lead over Trump.
