Barack Obama had hope. Kamala Harris is banking on freedom

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama ran on a message of hope in 2008, at a time when the country was weary of the ongoing war in Iraq and reeling from the global financial crisis. The theme was solidified when Shepard Fairey created an iconic poster of the then-senator, with the word “HOPE” across the bottom.

When he endorsed Kamala Harris on Friday, Obama invoked the term once again, saying the vice president “gives us all reason to hope.”

Harris appears to have her own theme emerging as her campaign begins to take shape.

“There are some people who think we should be a country of chaos. Of fear. Of hate,” Harris says in the voiceover for her first campaign ad. “We choose freedom.”

The hook to Beyoncé’s 2016 song “Freedom” (feat. Kendrick Lamar) thunders in — with its campaign-friendly line “I’ma keep running/ ’Cause a winner don’t quit on themselves” —  as images of crowds chanting “Kamala!” and smiling families flicker on the screen. 

“The freedom not just to get by, but get ahead. The freedom to be safe from gun violence. The freedom to make decisions about your own body. We choose a future where no child lives in poverty. Where we all can afford health care, where no one is above the law,” Harris says in the ad.

Messaging around freedom isn’t new, but Harris is making it the central theme of her campaign. By making the Beyoncé anthem her walk-out music — a song that became synonymous with the 2020 protests after the murder of George Floyd and emphasizes a generational contrast — and showing up in a tan suit on the third full day of her campaign — a look that led to controversy for Obama — Harris is signaling this will be a different kind of campaign.

Harris being able to pull off “Freedom” as a core song of her campaign speaks to her “understanding of what’s happening in this cultural moment so much more than so many politicians out there,” political strategist and 2008 Obama campaign press secretary Bill Burton told the Chronicle.

Democrats have already been trying to wrestle back the word “freedom” from Republicans, but Harris’ campaign is making the connection explicit. 

Republicans, including former President Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance, tout freedom on the campaign trail too. They’re likely to invoke it against Harris to argue that Americans deserve to be free from crime and other threats as they hammer her on public safety issues. Many of the CEOs who support Trump express a desire to be free from regulations and taxes.

But Democrats want to make the case that Republicans are actually advocating for a more restrictive government. Harris’ campaign wants to frame the election around reclaiming freedom, particularly in the wake of the Supreme Court eliminating the constitutional right to obtain an abortion.

“Ideas matter. No idea has mattered more in American history than the idea of freedom,” George Lakoff, author of the 2007 book “Whose Freedom? The Battle Over America’s Most Important Idea,” posted on the social media platform X on Thursday.

“There’s this question of, what is freedom, really? And how can the left readopt that and use it as a North Star for their messaging?” Tim Miller, a former Republican strategist who left the party in 2020, said in a video for news outlet the Bulwark.

“That is what Kamala does in this first video. She’s like, ‘We are taking freedom back. It is Donald Trump that doesn’t believe in these core American principles,’ ” Miller said. “That is powerful.”

Whereas President Joe Biden has warned that Trump is a threat to democracy, Harris has reframed the argument as a fight for freedom. That’s a new twist that “sets her apart from President Biden in a way that she has to,” Burton said.

“What President Trump did in his term in office, and the aftermath of the results have meant a loss of freedoms,” Burton said. Harris “can make that case in a way that is going to be really diminishing to Trump and Vance.”

Future Majority, a left-leaning advocacy group, found in 2022 that voters’ “perceptions of Republicans on Freedom have shown cracks in their leadership on this value. Democrats can deliver for the people better by advocating clear and concise messages to respond to conservative talking points through the Freedom Frame.”

The idea that “it’s our freedoms that are on the ballot” was the most powerful framing that Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, co-founder of donor and strategist hub Way to Win, found for the 2022 midterm elections, she said in a podcast in January.

Anat Shenker-Osorio, an Oakland-based communications consultant, said in the same podcast that Way to Win found in 2022, “in the states where Democrats really embrace this freedoms narrative — both like literally that wording or protect our freedoms even more — we won.”

Shenker-Osorio pointed to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (who reportedly is being considered as a potential running mate for Harris) as an example of another politician who’s successfully harnessed the freedom narrative. 

“In a state Biden barely won in 2020, Gov. Shapiro won his race by double digits — beating MAGA Republican Doug Mastriano by nearly 15 points. And he did so, messaging from a place of inclusivity, running his campaign with abortion at the forefront and promising to protect our freedoms,” she said.

Harris is seizing on the strategy.

“Generations of Americans before us led the fight for freedom. And now, Wisconsin, the baton is in our hands,” Harris said at her first campaign rally in Wisconsin Tuesday. She spoke about the freedom to vote, the freedom to “live safe from the terror of gun violence” and reproductive freedom. 

At a speech Thursday before the American Federation of Teachers, Harris spoke about the freedom to join a union, organize and collectively bargain, the right to be openly LGBTQ and the right to read and learn history.

Harris is also leaning into her relative youth and understanding of the cultural moment in a way that harks back to the 2008 campaign.

“I’ll never forget the day that I walked into the campaign office at like 6 or 6:30 in the morning and the will.i.am video dropped,” Burton said, referring to a viral collage-style music video of Obama’s concession speech in the New Hampshire primary that included celebrities like Common, John Legend and Scarlett Johansson. “To watch that explode on the internet after the New Hampshire primary was a very special and new thing.”

Progressive forces on the internet are embracing Harris. Fan-made video compilations of Harris have spread like wildfire across TikTok and other social media in the days since Harris’ announcement that she would seek the nomination. Many of the videos rely on the female singers who are dominating the music charts this summer, including Chappell Roan, Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Charli XCX. User-generated sounds on TikTok using Harris’ voice have millions of views, according to the super PAC Priorities USA Action.

“TikTok is to Kamala Harris in 2024 what YouTube was for Barack Obama in 2008,” journalist and immigration rights activist Jose Antonio Vargas posted to X. 

Obama ran a “data-driven, tech-powered campaign that was defined by a movement,” Vargas said. “(I)f the last 5 days is any indication, @KamalaHarris is building on the Obama playbook, running a campaign being shaped by a movement.”

Burton said younger voters are “yearning to have a candidate like her who can speak to a generation that feels like they haven’t been spoken to.”

Reach Shira Stein: shira.stein@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @shiramstein