Kamala Harris’ Newly Announced Presidential Run Draws Comparisons to Popular TV Shows

Television shows often emulate reality, and the events of this year are no different.

Amid Kamala Harris announcing her run for presidency in the 2024 United States Presidential Election after President Joe Biden stepped down on Sunday, July 21, several TV watchers are drawing parallels between real-life events and their favorite shows.

The most popular programs being referenced are The Simpsons, The Boys, and Veep, the latter of which aired its last episode in 2019.

Starting with the easiest comparison to break down, The Simpsons is, once again, being heralded for its eerie ability to look into the future.

The show’s longtime executive producer and writer Al Jean noted on social media that Harris has rocked a similar outfit to Lisa Simpson on The Simpsons Season 11 Episode 17, “Bart to the Future,” which sees Bart Simpson getting a peak into his future and discovering that his sister becomes president.

In the photos Jean shared, both are wearing purple suits with a pearl necklace. Harris wore the outfit in 2017 when she was being sworn in as vice president.

But this isn’t the first time the comparison has been made. In 2021, USA Today posted a fact check of a social media frenzy that claimed the hit FOX animated show predicted Harris’ inaugural look.

The outlet stated, at the time, that the episode made no reference to Harris and that wearing purple often represents unity and bipartisanship, which was a similar observation to what Entertainment Tonight said when Hillary Clinton wore a purple suit to her concession speech during the 2016 election.

Speaking of which, Clinton’s presidential run plays a key factor in the next TV show comparison. Social media users are predicting that if Harris’ run is successful, the former Democratic presidential nominee might enter her villain era à la Homelander from The Boys.

“Hillary rn hearing ‘Madame President Kamala Harris’ in her head over and over,” captioned one person on Twitter with an image of the antagonistic character.

Another shared a video montage of Homelander reacting emotionally to news, writing, “Hillary Clinton if Kamala Harris wins the presidential election.”

Now, I don’t think it’s fully accurate to pit the two women against each other, especially since Clinton was quick to endorse Harris in a shared statement with her husband that read, “[we] will do whatever we can to support her,” in reference to the presidential candidate.

While the comparison may be laced with a bit of misogyny, I choose to believe that it’s a commentary on the increasingly competitive political atmosphere and how badly most presidential candidates want to win.

That said, there have been several comparisons between the Prime Video series and real life with the most recent season seeing Homelander and another character plot to take over the White House.

Showrunner Eric Kripke even commented on the similarities in an interview with The Wrap earlier this month, saying, “This show has an increasingly disturbing track record of reflecting reality one way or another.”

He continued, “There’s some throwaway dialogue, for example, in that billionaires are talking about how they have to stack the Supreme Court to get the decisions that they need. I’m not happy being Satan’s writers room. I’m starting to get really troubled by it. But there does continue to be a certain eerie similarity between the show and the things that are happening in the real world.”

More recently, the show made headlines for issuing a statement about The Boys Season 4 Episode 8, “Assassination Run,” containing “scenes of fictional political violence” in the days following the attempted assassination on Donald Trump.

Lastly, there’s Veep — the political satire series that people have long made comparisons to Harris, whose best-known phrase is the confusingly delivered “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?”

A post from July 2 reads, “f— it, thread of kamala harris’s funniest veep moments,” has over 109K likes at the time of reporting and contains 18 video examples.

The sentiment of the thread has been echoed several times with a more recent post from NBC News reporter Sahil Kupar noting, “Veep is a documentary,” while sharing a video of Julia Louis-Dreyfuss’ Selina Meyer, a fictional vice president, announcing that she’s running for president after the current president decides not to.

Well, you can’t argue with that.

Majority Report co-host Emma Vigeland shared the video with her own pop culture prediction. “Kamala Harris is going to take a picture with Julia Louis-Dreyfus at some fundraiser and the campaign will tweet it out with a Veep-related caption,” she wrote.

At this point, stranger things have happened.

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