From: julianlzb87@gmail.com   
      
   Political candidates aren’t people these days so much as brand logos for   
   the business of politics. Their stock – the ticker tape of their   
   approval – goes up or down, but after any politician has reached a   
   certain level of mass recognition, their name and face hold value. It   
   doesn’t matter, necessarily, if most voters think they’re a joke. Their   
   image can drive media engagement just as their donor files and old   
   campaign data can be profitably mined.   
      
   Kamala Harris is a perfect example. She was, all but her most stubborn   
   supporters agree, a disastrous presidential nominee. An unpopular vice   
   president thrust to the top of the Democratic ticket in 2024 because Joe   
   Biden was too doddery, she benefitted from a brief bout of “Kamalamania”   
   before her flaws glared too brightly and she lost to Donald Trump.   
   Various electoral post-mortems have revealed quite how ill-suited she   
   was to nationwide campaigning.   
      
   But none of that seems to matter. Kamala Harris still believes in   
   herself. She thinks she inspired an Obama-esque wave of hopeful   
   progressivism. And she remains a leading contender to be the Democratic   
   nominee in 2028, partly because of a lack of decent alternatives. The   
   betting markets have Gavin Newsom, the deeply loathed Governor of   
   California, as the strong favorite for now, with that young   
   congresswoman from the Bronx (via Westchester) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez   
   in second place. But Harris has the campaign architecture and a clear   
   edge among black voters, who increasingly decide Democratic contests. On   
   Thursday, in a typically gauche video, she announced the relaunch of the   
   “KamalaHQ” hub, her new-media site, which has a million followers on X   
   and 5 million on TikTok. “Headquarters” is part of a project to gin up   
   Gen Z in good time for the midterms in November, the sassy left-liberal   
   answer to the meme-saturated Trump machine. Social-media users should   
   brace themselves for endless snark masquerading as politics. Yesterday,   
   the Trump War room account (2.5 million followers) greeted the arrival   
   of Headquarters by saying: “Oh, you guys want some more pain?” “This   
   type of pain, or…?,” snapped back Headquarters, with a picture of that   
   big bruise on Donald Trump’s hand. Try not to die laughing.   
      
   There will be few politicians like Jeane Freeman again   
   “Conservatives build permanent organizing infrastructure,” declared   
   Headquarters in its launch press release. “Progressives have   
   historically built machines that dismantle after Election Day.   
   Headquarters is the end of that cycle.” There also bold plans for   
   Headquarters to build a large presence on Substack, YouTube and elsewhere.   
      
   The extent to which Harris is behind the move remains unclear. She’s   
   still, officially, on an elongated book tour for her 2024 campaign   
   memoir 107 Days and is named only as Headquarters’s “chair emerita,” an   
   honorary role. Some of her former campaign team will run the   
   organization alongside the hierarchy of the People for the American Way,   
   a fiercely left-liberal non-profit, which was founded in the 1980s   
   primarily as a vehicle to attack the Christian right.   
      
   But if the Democrats win convincingly in the midterms in November, (read   
   Charles Lipson’s excellent new Spectator US cover piece on the subject),   
   Trump 2.0’s radical agenda will stall and “Headquarters” will be hailed   
   as a formidable new-media weapon, a message dynamo capable of winning   
   elections. Harris, as its progenitor, will be sure to claim credit. The   
   New York Times and other outlets will publish articles about her   
   indomitability, about how close she actually came to beating Trump, and   
   about how she was willing to take a step back to leap forward. The   
   wheels of her 2028 candidacy will screech into motion. The public will   
   just have to deal with it.   
      
      
   Freddy Gray   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)