As the finger-pointing begins, and the autopsy of the Kamala Harris campaign continues, financial details are being released on how the Harris campaign managed to blow more than $1 billion in war-chest funds — and not only lose, but get wiped off the electoral map by Donald Trump, who ended his campaign with roughly $488 million. That’s not a Dr. Evil typo: Kamala Harris not only blew a billion dollars, but actually ended up $20 million in debt.
As it turns out, the Harris campaign wasn’t run much differently. As reported in the Washington Examiner, the Harris campaign spent upwards of six figures to build a custom set for her appearance on the Call Me Daddy podcast, which only netted about 800,000 downloads.
There were seven swing-state concerts that involved high-priced performers — Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Jon Bon Jovi, Ricky Martin and more — who seemingly ended up costing the Harris campaign more than $20 million on event production alone, and reportedly even more on paying the celebrities to appear. Even Oprah Winfrey charged the campaign $1 million to show up. The campaign went so far into debt that the campaign was reportedly forced to scrap Canadian Nineties indie-pop singer Alanis Morissette to save money. The pop concert campaign strategy is said to have been the brainchild of former Obama advisors on the campaign.
Of course it was lmao. I saw approximately one million ads of the Democratic politicians begging for donations, and I'm not even on their email and phone lists. Thinking about all the regular working people who donated their hard-earned money for it to be lit on fire by a PodJohn
https://thespectator.com/newsletter/kamala-harris-ran-the-fyre-festival-of-campaigns-bad-press-11-11-2024/
Edit: I had almost forgotten about the Kamala Fashion Week party
Celebrity endorsements are actively detrimental to a campaign in the UK. People get PISSED at celebrities and tell them to fuck off out of politics. It aggravates people considerably.
I don't know whether this is also detrimental in the US but judging by spending multi millions on these people and achieving NOTHING it clearly seems like a wasteful approach. It's all show. Ok you did concerts? What's that gonna do for people's lives?
Counterpoint:
Celebrity is a link between Elites and the Masses as a deliberately crafted parasocial relationship created by Old Media for advertising. These days celebrity is giving way to influencers as the old media system gives way to new media, but using that parasocial relationship for advertising is still the same.