Kamala Harris, current United States vice president and the Democratic Party’s candidate for president, now has a Twitch channel. Yesterday evening, her team broadcasted from it for the first time, allowing Twitch viewers to tune into a couple hours of speeches from the final night of the DNC, including Harris’ big coronation. The stream peaked at 933 concurrent viewers, well below the Twitch debuts of other presidential aspirants like Bernie Sanders (7,233) and Donald Trump (12,826).
During the broadcast, chat was largely in emote-only mode, with many seemingly intended to express enthusiasm (hearts, raised hands, signs that read ‘yea,’ etc). These were sporadically broken up by floods of Palestinian flags, as well as images of letters that spelled out “Free Palestine.”
This followed a week of thousands-strong pro-Palestinian protests outside the DNC, as well as demonstrations from the Uncommitted Movement, a group led by delegates representing hundreds of thousands of people who voted “uncommitted” in the Democratic primaries as a result of Biden's seemingly bottomless well – and warchest – of support for Israel. The Uncommitted Movement attempted to negotiate with the Democratic Party to get a Palestinian American speaker, whose brief speech would have been vetted, on stage at the DNC, only to be turned away Wednesday night. The day before, the DNC handed the mic over to parents of an Israeli American hostage held by Hamas, prompting demands from the left and powerful unions like United Auto Workers for someone of Palestinian descent to be granted the same privilege.
During her own speech, Harris disappointed those who hoped she might deviate from Biden’s bloody path, saying that she “will always stand up for Israel's right to defend itself” and “will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself.” However, she also acknowledged the “heartbreaking” scale of suffering in Gaza and said that she and Biden continue to push for a ceasefire deal so that "Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self determination." Granted, Biden has been saying things like this for the past ten months, and it has done absolutely nothing to change the material reality of the situation – which is continuous, pointless slaughter of (at least) tens of thousands of innocent people.
Harris’ poor performance on Twitch does not indicate a lack of interest in her campaign, even on the platform. At the same time as Harris’ channel, Hasan “HasanAbi” Piker, the biggest political commentator on Twitch, streamed Harris’ speech to an audience that maxed out at nearly 60,000 concurrent viewers. Other, smaller politically-focused channels simultaneously broadcast her speech to thousands more.
Harris also does not have novelty on her side; when Sanders and Trump joined Twitch, it was nearly unheard of for politicians to do such a thing. Now many have tried to varying degrees of success, from Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with her 430,000-viewer Among Us stream in 2020 (which included Piker, among many other big-name content creators) to Republican Representative Matt Gaetz’s comically sad six-viewer showing in 2022. More recently, Trump has cameoed in content from somehow-popular bottom feeders like Kick streamer Adin Ross to the tune of hundreds of thousands of viewers. The DNC, meanwhile, just allowed content creators to attend for the first time, granting special access to 200 and even special-er access to a select handful. The RNC ran a similar, albeit more limited, playbook, opening its doors to around 70 content creators in July.
It’s worth noting that Sanders and Trump’s Twitch channels no longer post numbers even remotely as impressive as they used to back in 2020. These days, Sanders is lucky to break 1,000, while Trump tends to hover between 2,000 and 5,000, with one recent spike that went beyond 10,000. Granted, until July, Trump was banned from Twitch following the January 6, 2021 insurrection, and nothing boosts numbers on livestreaming platforms like a long-awaited return.
What these channels and Harris’ have in common is that, so far, they’ve largely been content to broadcast speeches, rallies, and other events rather than directly interact with Twitch streamers or viewers. On Twitch, scanning and responding to chat is the bare minimum, and if you want your channel to grow, the meta these days is to form relationships with well-known streamers with whom you share values and a general vibe. No politician has successfully pulled this off, and the reason why is simple: It’s a full-time job. Politicians – at least, if they’re halfway decent – already have one of those.
That said, Harris’ team has proven impressively social-media savvy, embracing the summer’s inescapable brat meme and invoking Weird Twitter legend Dril in a campaign email (although you could argue that that second one ended up backfiring). Perhaps, then, this is just the beginning for Harris’ humble little Twitch channel. Who knows? Maybe Tim Walz will go live tomorrow and play some Crazy Taxi.
Additional reporting by Riley MacLeod.
