Backward and in Converse: Artful Political Communication; How the Biden/Harris Presidential Ticket Reverses the 2-for-1 Campaign

Abstract

This article critically examines the visual and mediated communication of vice presidential candidate and now vice president, Kamala Harris, and Harris’s political surrogates leading up to the 2020 presidential election. As a launching point, we build on our 2016 election retrospective, where we analyzed “Hillary Through Time” and found that political women were not only primed to “take advantage of the democratization of visual rhetorical presentations” but also, political women could challenge normative coverage “through a mediated image of her own making.” Fast forward 4 years, we offer such agency through the visual communication of Kamala’s campaign-mediated image. Drawing from the philosophy of Susanne K. Langer, we argue that Kamala Harris intentionally advances “artful political communication” as a method for challenging gendered aesthetic tropes of political women; ultimately shifting the narrative of “2 for the price of 1” from deferential to empowered.