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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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It's been annoying, but also interesting.

First, it's surprisingly low-context. Kamela doesn't identify herself by name, her association with the campaign, and there's no time reference. More to the point, it doesn't mention Joe Biden, or his resignation.

This is interesting, because the nature of the timing (it started within 24 hours of Biden's resignation) is a clear indication that it was being planned / scheduled as part of the post-resignation media push that was being planned even before it succeeded, but that the video was being created in a plausibly deniable way, which could still have been used even if Biden didn't resign. In other words, a dual-use product that wouldn't necessarily have raised any alarms within the Biden Camp if they'd been internally linked, as- hey- this is part of her job.

But on the flip side, the videos are also relatively law quality in terms of production effects, which suggests haste. There's the sub-par audio quality, minimal (any?) audio background to stir emotions to the audience like most fear-themed electioneering despite that being the crux of the video openings (existential threat to democracy narrative). It's basically just... Kamela, sitting down and talking, but not self-identifying. The lack of polish could be indicative that they wanted this to be a lower-profile recording, and not go through the sort of review / focus testing that would lead to larger internal awareness before running, which fits the pre-planned release narrative.

The existential threat to democracy theme is notable, as the Democrats have largely dropped that since the assassination attempt. It's coming back in some ways, but had been much lower in priority/prominence than before. That suggests this fundraising video was possibly made before the assassination attempt- so more than a week ago- when the narrative was more in vogue, but that they didn't have the time / opportunity / desire to re-record. Which would make sense as the last week before resignation had Kamela under scrutiny by the Biden Camp, watching for disloyalty, when her ascent relied on other actors (coordinated by Party VIPs) acting without her in direct coordination.

The mass distribution is probably not accidental either. The Democratic Party is quite capable of tailoring messaging when it wants to, but this has been a full-blast to unrelated topic-media, including topics typically associated with the politically apathetic/unfamiliar who normally aren't targetted precisely because of said apathy and lack of return on monetary investment. That suggests that a non-monetary investment may be part of the goal, and one of the potential goals for such sudden pervasiveness is to raise the profile of Kamela herself to people who frankly likely wouldn't know or recognize her. Even without directly identifying her, it's putting her face and her voice in their mind to build familiarity when they do see her on national media.

That was my thought too: it's a legitimation drive to establish her in the general public mind ahead of attacks, blunders, etc.