A former financial analyst, she ran for Congress in 2018 but lost in the Democratic primary.
asserted
she → run → primary
She went on to become a key fundraiser for the DNC, raising millions for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in 2020 and Kamala Harris’ in 2024.
asserted
She → go → 2024
But, in the wake of Harris’ defeat, dismayed with what she’d seen and how money had been spent, she had a highly publicized break from the party, which she details in her new book, “Unburdened: A Former Democrat Insider’s Shocking Account of Political Power, Betrayal, and Party Collapse” (Harper, Sept. 22).
asserted
she → see → Power
“I don’t think I could have lived with myself had I not told the truth,” she recently told Fox News.
uncertain
she → think → News
In this excerpt, she writes of how the Harris campaign lied about celebrities such as Beyonce and Taylor Swift to attract and exploit crowds.
asserted
campaign → write → crowds
Just kidding — that was just a lie to pack the stadium for Kamala’s acceptance speech.
asserted
that → kid → speech
Deceit slithered through Chicago like Dementors from “Harry Potter,” chilling the air as fifty thousand delegates, alternates, volunteers and press descended upon Carl Sandburg’s “Hog Butcher for the World.”
asserted
delegates → slither → World
As a member of the National Finance Committee, I was ushered in as a VIP, gliding from our hotel to the United Center in a private shuttle that looped through the city’s veins.
But the moment Beyoncé failed to take the convention stage, disillusionment spilled into plain view.
asserted
disillusionment → usher → view
True to form, Team B.O.C.H. — the name I’d given Biden, Obama, Clinton and Harris — botched the optics with spectacular ineptitude, courting worldwide ridicule and accusations of deceit.
asserted
I → give → deceit
Older Americans may not comprehend the power this pop demigod wields over the liberal faithful, but by willfully fanning the flames of the wildfire rumors, they effectively swore to the surging throngs — chiefly younger voters, an indispensable electoral force — that Queen Bey would serenade the masses.
uncertain
Bey → comprehend → masses
When she didn’t, the betrayal clanged with cataclysmic force, raw, ruthless, and ragingly ruinous.
asserted
betrayal → clang → force
Harris face-planted before the very voters she needed most.
asserted
she → plant → voters
The singer P!nk wasn’t a big enough artist to fill Beyoncé’s towering stilettos.
asserted
singer → fill → stilettos
Alex observed that historians would pinpoint the Beyoncé debacle as the tipping point, the moment the campaign’s sugar high crashed into a brutal hangover, highlighting Harris’s ineptitude at political pageantry and her inability to follow through on her massive promises.
asserted
high → observe → promises
In politics, as in life, perception is reality; the court of public opinion either dooms or deifies.
asserted
court → doom → opinion
The DNC’s boneheaded showmanship hit a new low in Houston at a high-profile rally on Oct. 25.
asserted
showmanship → hit → Oct.
Less than two weeks ahead of the election, they once again dangled Beyoncé like forbidden fruit, only to snatch it away a second time, igniting a righteous rage that rippled through the ranks.
asserted
that → dangle → ranks
Queen Bey, loved for her anthems, not her analyses, gave a speech that no one wanted.
asserted
one → love → that
She had performed for Clinton in 2016, only for Trump’s win to splatter egg on her sequins.
asserted
win → perform → sequins
Perhaps she was done wagering her crown on another politician.
asserted
she → do → politician
When Harris took the stage after Bey’s letdown, she was greeted by furious howls, serpents of humanity streaming toward the exits.
asserted
she → take → exits
Team Harris wielded celebrities as crowd-wrangling bait, a tacit admission
In the campaign’s ebbing final hours, a VIP summons thunked in my inbox: an invitation to Vice President Harris’s valedictory rally, promising a lineup of mystery superstars, right here in Philadelphia, the aorta of the swing states.
asserted
summons → wield → states
For a full week, Kamala’s rumor factory cranked at full throttle, recycling the playbook they had used to generate hype for Beyoncé’s twice-teased, twice-thwarted appearances: first at the convention, then at the Houston rally.
asserted
they → crank → rally
The stage was set for history.
asserted
stage → set → history
Or, as it turned out, for the most expensive karaoke night in American political memory.
asserted
it → turn → memory
To build mystique around their pièce de résistance, Kamala’s hype arsonists torched what little credibility they had left in one sun-kissed conflagration of rumor: Taylor Swift, Pennsylvania’s prodigal daughter, was allegedly descending from the pop-star heavens in a blaze of sequins and voter registration forms to electrify a race that had flatlined for weeks.
uncertain
that → build → weeks
The night before the election, Fox News journalist Jacqui Heinrich suggested to me that it would be Taylor.
uncertain
it → suggest → me
Citing his own Vatican-level infallibility, a high-ranking Biden White House official said with absolute certainty that it was going to be Bad Bunny.
asserted
it → cite → certainty
Campaign czars swore it would be a chart-incinerating rock star, not a recently dumped has-been desperate to scrape together more sales on the worst-reviewed album of the year.
asserted
it → swear → year
A fellow megabundler pinged his jealously guarded hunch: Beyoncé, stung by the backlash to her two non-performances and desiring redemption, would make the third time the charm.
asserted
time → ping → performances
Theories swirled like fanfic plot twists: Why Taylor?
asserted
Theories → swirl → twists
Pop’s pantheon had to descend — it simply had to.
asserted
it → have → ?
No universe existed where Kamala would shaft young Americans yet again, belly-flopping before the nation’s glare, with the entire globe thirsting like coyotes for the next overlong heehaw or word salad.
asserted
globe → exist → heehaw
So, you can imagine the universal disappointment when the mystery guest was unmasked once more as Katy Perry, ready to bumble through the songs she wrote with an accused sex pest to a crowd of single-issue #MeToo voters.
asserted
she → imagine → voters
This was a con executed with sociopathic detachment.
asserted
This → execute → detachment
They dangled Taylor, Beyoncé, and Bad Bunny overhead like manna, luring thirty thousand shivering masochists onto frozen concrete, and the internet flambéed itself in a frenzy of speculation.
asserted
internet → dangle → speculation
By the time Katy bounced out waving a sparkler nobody wanted, the footage was already cut, the headlines were locked, and the dopamine had been strip-mined.
asserted
dopamine → bounce → sparkler
But instead of a single villain, there was a syndicate of deceit, each pocketing a succulent slice of the scam.
asserted
each → be → scam
Kamala, Queen Con, reaped rivers of rapturous ink and Instagram idolatry, snagging her Rocky moment.
asserted
Kamala → reap → moment
Her optics-obsessed staffers got their crowds.
asserted
staffers → obsess → crowds
…and 2 more, not listed.
The Aporia
