Ed Markey and the memes
How edgy memes got Ed Markey to victory
Sen. Ed Markey won Massachusetts’ Senate primary on September 1 by a comfortable margin but just a few months ago this outcome did not seem likely. Polling in May had Markey 16 points behind his challenger, Rep. Joe Kennedy III. What changed in that time?
A couple of factors. The two I want to focus on though are the youth excitement that erupted for Markey and the memes and social media strategy that helped fuel that eruption.
Youth enthusiasm for Markey has to first and foremost be attributed to his progressive agenda. Markey was first elected to Congress in 1973 and his record since then has featured a number of stances that would disappoint leftists and progressives today. But he changed his views and showed it through policy. He especially showed his commitment to tackling the climate crisis by co-authoring the Green New Deal with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
This one factor alone was enough to bring many young people passionate about addressing the climate crisis to campaign for him. But his social media early in the campaign was still lacking.
Markey was tweeting the way a fairly unknown septuagenarian Senator would be expected to tweet. That is, he was tweeting in a safe, Capitol Hill-communications-director-approved manner. The tweets would get little attention and Markey never had a strong online following. Better put, his tweets felt like condensed press releases.
And that’s a fine strategy if a candidate’s seat is safe, and they don’t have a need for a strong social media presence. But Markey was being challenged by the latest hope of the Kennedy dynasty. Someone with a historic following who was expected to win based on his last name alone.
Luckily for Markey, the campaign hired digital and creative director Paul Bologna to get Markey the following he would need to hold on to his seat. The Markey campaign was able to craft an image of the senator as a working-class guy with a radically progressive agenda. He became the cool grandpa that could kick it with the union workers and the kids fighting to end the climate crisis. And the thing is, Markey is that guy. Now he could portray that image on social media and earn his campaign the energy that only people who were good at the internet can provide.
The end of the presidential election left many of the very-online leftists who loved Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders looking for a new person to channel their eager enthusiasm toward. Add to that the fact that everyone in the country was spending more time living online because of the pandemic, and we got a setting where Markey — and the Markeyverse his campaign and supporters gave life to — would thrive.
I could detail the way Markey went from a social media unknown to the top progressive meme of 2020 but good reporters have done that already and I suggest you check their work out.
Starting with his now-iconic social distancing look (which later became a t-shirt) that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez helped elevate, Markey leaned into the new image his campaign created and quickly became the meme that fueled the symbiotic relationship between Gen Z meme-makers and Markey’s campaign. Kids would turn Markey into a meme and the campaign would elevate the content the kids created, helping build up Markey’s image while incentivizing kids to keep making content to solidify and disperse that image.
The memes made were bold and new for the political space they occupied, but they were not unfamiliar to those who understood the meme formats and references that were often used to make the Markey content. There were fan-cams, dank meme Facebook groups, Avengers memes, classic Dragon Ball Z references and tons of edgy weird shitposting that hit right.
In the past year, Sen. Sander’s supporters made many memes about his presidential run and the campaign even used some, but the campaign never embraced it to the level that Markey’s campaign has.
Markey’s social media took qualities that are often applied to stanning celebrities and applied it to the senator. Markey didn’t shy away from these social media aspects that politicians oftentimes avoid because of their amateurish quality. Politicians and their advisors have long assumed that this kind of engagement and content will only delegitimize a candidate and be a liability. But Markey showed that a candidate can control their narrative if the people making the content trust the candidate. Not only that, the content and engagement itself can also be a pillar of a campaign’s communications strategy.
There’s always the risk that candidates can become associated with the bad qualities of their stans. This happened to Sen. Sanders and his so-called Bernie bros. Kennedy tried to create the same association between Markey and the few toxic fans he had. However, this failed to stick with Markey because his campaign had put so much effort into associating itself with the more fun and edgy-but-harmless stans Markey had. Yes, Markey’s campaign hit Kennedy but it never crossed any lines. This clear association even allowed the campaign to poke fun at Kennedy’s calls for Markey to publicly instruct his followers to stop attacking Kennedy.
Despite being thoroughly thought out, Markey’s image felt more “authentic” — that quality all politicians chase but none can define. Whatever authentic means, Markey got quite close to it, and he did it by letting others help define his image. And that is as close as anyone can get to being authentic: Having how you define yourself to people match how people define you.
In his victory speech, Markey said: “Tonight is more than just a celebration of a movement. It is a reaffirmation of the need to have a movement, a progressive movement, of young people demanding radical change, demanding justice. A movement giving voice and power to young people when for far too long they were ignored.”
Markey embraced young people and the weird but eager energy they brought to his campaign and the issues they cared about. The relationship and trust between the candidate and his supporters are what allowed the Markeyverse to flourish and ultimately carry Markey to victory.
The Markey vs. Kennedy race marks the end of the internal electoral fight between the progressive and establishment wings of the Democratic Party. The fight will continue but, at least for the next year or so, it will not be one fought at the ballot box (at least for federal level fights). Still, Markey’s victory shows the power that young progressives posses and anyone running for office in the near future should pay attention. Young people’s support didn’t live and die online. Yes, they made memes and videos but they also made a load of calls and sent millions of text for Markey that can be credited with helping him win.
Markey is now on-route to spend another six years in the Senate, fighting hard for the Green New deal and many other progressive policy priorities alongside the young people that helped his be re-elected. The memes and the stanning will likely ebb a bit but not die out. They’ll live on in social media and might even come back the next time the Senator has a challenge. But whatever fight Markey takes up next, he’ll have a dedicated meme legion behind him. And they’ll fight alongside him, all gas no brakes.
Hits from the group chats:
I had to do a double take to make sure it wasn’t McGrath