Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty Images
On Tuesday, during Tim Walz’s raucous first appearance as Kamala Harris’s running mate, the Minnesota governor asserted that he was looking forward to debating his Republican counterpart, J.D. Vance — “if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.” He added, knowingly, “See what I did there?”
If you’ve spent much time on social media in the past two weeks, you saw what he did there. A brief refresher: On July 24, an X user who has since made his account private wrote, of Vance:
Photo: archive.is/X
This anecdote was wholly invented — “Let’s cut to the chase: J.D. Vance did not fuck a couch” — The Cut wrote in its explainer — but it became a running gag, thanks in part to a boost from a credulous Kathy Griffin, a misguided and later-deleted AP fact check on the matter, and the obligatory John Oliver segment. (“I think the reason it spread so fast might be that (a) nobody read that fucking book, and (b) it was incredibly easy to believe,” Oliver said.)
The couch gag was an amusing bit of internet esoterica that perfectly met the moment. Joe Biden’s senescence had given Donald Trump and his new authoritarian-leaning running mate free rein to bully their opponents; now, Democrats could push back without one hand tied behind their backs. They could also harness the internet in a way the famously offline Biden campaign struggled to do. And J.D. Vance, unlike Donald Trump, is a mostly blank slate, whose awkwardness on the stump and desperation behind the eyes make him vulnerable to attacks that stick. Amid the positivity, momentum, and general catharsis that has so far defined Harris’s ascendance, it didn’t matter so much that most of the couch jokes fell firmly into the “funny for politics but not actually funny funny” category, with a few exceptions. Besides, by a certain point, almost everyone engaging with the joke knew it was a joke. One could argue this was all a harmless good time, far removed from any lofty debate about disinformation and threats to democracy.
Fine. Fair enough.
But things moved into less comfortable territory when actual elected officials and their social media accounts got in on the gag. There was the Harris campaign’s punny, wink-and-nod reference:
And two Democratic senators delivering jibes at Vance while perched on a sofa. (Get it??)
Walz’s joke on Tuesday was by far the highest-profile invocation yet, and we’re not done yet, if this lame Wednesday missive from a Democratic Florida Congressman is any indication:
Walz’s mention prompted some mainstream media criticism from the likes of CNN’s Jake Tapper, who called it “a gross smear.” That flavor of criticism prompted its own series of rebuttals, which argued, in essence, that Walz’s winky mention of a fake story was fair game and that everyone needs to lighten up.
Many liberals are still haunted by the “When they go low, we go high” mentality of 2016, and most don’t want to be scolded about playing nice in 2024. Trump’s drumbeat of outrageous lies and conspiracy-mongering over the past decade, the Wille Horton and Swift Boat–style tactics that preceded his rise, and a perception that the press comes down harder on Democrats than Republicans on matters of decorum have all made arguing for maintaining some kind of moral probity difficult. So if the couch joke has a certain middle-school “Why do you keep hitting yourself?” quality, so do the comebacks to any suggestion that it’s out of bounds for lawmakers. Shouldn’t Democrats avoid trafficking in made-up stories, even jokingly? (Oh, but it’s okay when Republicans do it? And why do you hate fun?)
Unfortunately, it’s not okay when Republicans or Democrats do it — yes, even when there’s not a direct, or even near direct, equivalence between the two parties’ tactics. It does not follow that Trump accusing Democrats of killing babies and Kamala Harris of being a communist monster means that Democrats are allowed to lower their standards. That’s not how standards work.
Besides the tiresome-but-correct moral case, leaning on fake memes also just isn’t necessary, much as it may delight Democrats’ online base. Good political candidates have always known how to get vicious while staying within the lines of accuracy. This means homing in on opponents’ real weaknesses, a task the Harris campaign has thus far excelled at. The Harris campaign has gotten tremendous mileage out of Vance’s jittery answers on the trail, Trump’s criminal past, and the GOP’s general slide into eccentric extremism (though, as in 2020, they may be too addicted to the internet). And the Harris campaign has known how to toe the line between effective personal jabs and unhelpful groupthink. For instance, on Wednesday night, Harris met febrile “Lock him up!” chants with a sensible deflection to the legal process. She sensed, correctly, that stooping to Republicans’ level was politically counterproductive. The couch joke opens up not-totally-unfair accusations that Democrats won’t play by the rules they claim to revere. Why even risk it?
There’s no need to exaggerate the importance of this issue; if Democrats ride the couch-fucker joke to victory in November, I will not weep for our republic. But Walz hasn’t deployed it again since Tuesday, hopefully because he understands that merely stating what Vance and Trump actually believe is effective enough.
