We did it, Joe!

"We did it, Joe!" is a viral video in which Kamala Harris calls Joe Biden to congratulate him on winning the 2020 United States presidential election. The quote "We did it, Joe!" became a meme, and Harris's tweet publishing the video became one of the most-ever liked posts on Twitter (now X).

Background

The 2020 presidential election was severely disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which began notably affecting life in the United States in March 2020. Biden's general election campaign limited its in-person events, and the candidate appeared frequently via live and pre-recorded videos from the basement of his Delaware home.

The pandemic also caused an unprecedented spike in mail-in voting, which did not require voters to appear in person at polling stations. As a result, while media organizations have been largely able to predict the results of U.S. presidential races on election night in recent decades, several battleground states remained too close to call on November 3, 2020. In particular, a Pennsylvania law precluding the process for counting mail-in ballots until polls closed caused a marked delay in the state's tabulations. As counting progressed, then-President Donald Trump falsely claimed he had prevailed in Pennsylvania. On the morning of November 7, the Associated Press and other major media organizations determined that Biden's lead in Pennsylvania was sufficient to declare him the winner of the state and thus that he had accumulated enough votes in the Electoral College to become president-elect.

Video

Kamala Harris, pictured in 2019, spoke to Joe Biden on the phone after the two were projected to win the 2020 presidential election

At 12:23 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on November 7, after news organizations began calling the election, Harris tweeted a 16-second video in which she stands in a grassy field wearing athletic clothes and sunglasses, holding a cell phone in her right hand and wired ear buds in her left. Harris tells the person on the phone, reportedly Biden, "We did it. We did it, Joe! You're going to be the next president of the United States," then laughs. A black Chevrolet Suburban crosses the frame in the first few seconds of the video, and a person in a black suit is seen in the upper right portion of the frame.

Harris's husband Doug Emhoff said that he filmed the video after the two received the news of the election result while they were out jogging. Twenty minutes before Harris posted the video, Emhoff tweeted a picture of the couple hugging in a grassy area. The event reportedly took place near the Biden campaign's headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware.

Reception

By the afternoon of November 7, the video had been liked on X, then Twitter, more than 800,000 times. It would later amass 2.9 million likes, making it the 16th-most liked post on X ever as of July 2024.

In the days after the video was posted, creators on TikTok spoofed it using the original audio or their own renditions, exaggerating Harris's lilting tone and the lack of enunciation in her third sentence. By Thanksgiving later that month, users posted videos in which they recited the "We did it, Joe!" video in place of saying grace at family gatherings.

The phrase "We did it, Joe!" became adopted by White House personnel, including Harris and Emhoff, as a form of celebration. In June 2023, the actor Keke Palmer delivered an impression of the "We did it, Joe!" phrase onstage with Harris at an event in New Orleans.

In February 2022, Kanye West released the song "Louis Bags," which samples the "We did it, Joe!" video in its introduction.