Kamala Harris kicks off Twitch channel with DNC speech stream

As Vice President Kamala Harris officially accepted the Democratic nomination for president, she revealed another piece of her social outreach strategy. Harris’ speech was broadcast on her Twitch account, which she launched ahead of her Thursday night address at the Democratic National Convention.

Harris’ Twitch account drew about 1,000 concurrent viewers during her DNC address, according to Streams Charts. The August 22 broadcast was the first piece of public content on the Harris-affiliated hub, which currently counts close to 7,000 followers.

In comparison, Harris’ political rival has a much larger following on the Amazon-owned platform. Since getting his Twitch account unbanned a month ago, Donald Trump has grown his follower count to more than 172,000.

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Going forward, there are several possible outcomes for the Vice President’s Twitch account. In the simplest sense, her streams are one piece of a sprawling distribution strategy that includes both vertical and horizontal streams across major platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.

In the immediate aftermath of Harris’ DNC appearance, her Twitch account resembles the other on-demand accounts associated with her presidential run. The clips available on the account include one of her campaign ads and a snippet of her DNC speech that shows her accepting the Democratic nomination.

But when it comes to Twitch, Harris could benefit by following her opponent’s lead. Trump has appealed to the creator community by hanging out with streamers like Adin Ross and Logan Paul.

Harris, whose political party credentialed hundreds of influencers for the DNC, can use her Twitch account to host collabs alongside those young, persuasive voices. She could even use Twitch’s new Knock feature to initiate some of those team-ups, though that might come off as a bit “fellow kids“-y.

The Harris team may have already started seeking some of those partnerships. Kai Cenat alleged on stream that he had turned down calls from the Harris campaign, though the validity of that claim was later called into question.

If the Vice President would prefer a Twitch hangout with someone a little less volatile than Cenat, she could pursue a collab with a creator like HasanAbi, who has experience streaming alongside liberal politicians. Connecting with conscientious, motivated influencers would give Harris a link to Gen Z voters who are leading conversations on subjects like Gaza and the U.S. TikTok divestiture law.

Harris doesn’t seem like much of a video game player, but her activity on Twitch could be her next big internet meme. We already had Brat summer — maybe it’s time for Fallout fall.