Kamala Harris is back on social media — not with a message, but with a rebrand. The former vice president announced last Thursday that her dormant campaign accounts have been handed over to a new outfit called "Headquarters," a joint venture between a group of her former campaign digital staffers and People for the American Way, a left-wing organization that has received $4.5 million from George Soros's Open Society Foundation since 2016.
The accounts had been collecting dust for over a year. Now they've been repackaged, re-staffed, and pointed squarely at the man Democrats can't stop thinking about: President Donald Trump.
The rollout went about as smoothly as you'd expect.
The Daily Mail reported that the new venture launched on X under the handle @Headquarters_67 — a reference to the "6-7" trend popularized in 2024. The problem: the trend was already spent. Even CNN's Dana Bash couldn't resist:
"Six-seven as the kids used to say" — adding that the kids also "used to say that's probably cringe."
When your cultural references get mocked on CNN — not exactly a hotbed of conservative media criticism — you've miscalculated. The handle was quickly changed to @Headquarters68_, then again to @HQNewsNow. Three handles in the span of a launch. That's not iteration. That's panic.
One unnamed Democratic consultant offered what may have been the most honest assessment of the whole affair, telling the Daily Mail it was a:
"Smart to make use of that big audience but missed opportunity to call it Headquarters69"
When your own side's best feedback is a joke about a sex number, the project may not be commanding the gravitas its architects envisioned.
The operational structure here deserves attention. Luminary Strategies — formed by former Harris campaign digital staffers Parker Butler, Lauren Kapp, and Arlie Shugaar — teamed up with People for the American Way to seize control of the accounts Harris built during her presidential run. Those accounts carried millions of followers across X and TikTok.
People for the American Way is run by Svante Myrick, who described the group's mission as:
"Leveraging culture to change our politics."
The group's own announcement framed the project as:
"An effort to mobilize pro-justice, pro-fairness, pro-democracy young people against far-right extremism."
Translation: a Soros-backed political operation wearing the skin of a meme account. The $4.5 million pipeline from the Open Society Foundation to People for the American Way since 2016 makes this less a grassroots digital uprising and more a well-funded influence operation dressed in TikTok clothing.
Harris herself recorded a video for the launch, celebrating the rebooted space for people to:
"Get basically the latest of what's going on."
Inspiring stuff.
One political digital source told the Daily Mail something worth sitting with:
"She absolutely sold her list."
The source described the accounts as "worth serious money." Harris accrued millions of followers during her campaign. Those followers — their attention, their data, their engagement metrics — carry real value in the influencer market.
The handover of those accounts to a newly formed consulting group partnered with a Soros-funded nonprofit raises an obvious question: who benefited financially from this transfer?
Headquarters did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Mail.
Meanwhile, Luminary Strategies posted job listings requiring applicants to demonstrate "a deep passion for saving democracy and fighting fascism" and "love for the internet and online culture." The juxtaposition says everything.
One requirement is the kind of thing you put on a résumé to get hired at a think tank. The other is what you'd write to get hired at BuzzFeed in 2015. The project can't decide if it's a political weapon or a content farm — so it's trying to be both.
The Headquarters team appeared to imitate the approach of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has carved out a niche aggressively challenging and mocking President Trump and his allies on social media. But imitation isn't strategy. It's an admission that you don't have one.
Billy McLaughlin, former White House Director of Digital Content for President Trump, offered the sharpest diagnosis. He told the Daily Mail:
"Everyone is chasing Trump. The president sets the tone, the pace, the platforms, and the message. The rest of them scramble to copy it months later."
He didn't stop there:
"Instead of listening to what Americans actually want, her team shoved another consultant-driven digital fantasy down young people's throats. This will fail, just like the last one. But, congrats to the D.C. consultant getting rich off the wreckage."
This is the core problem Democrats keep refusing to confront. President Trump dominates social media not because he has better consultants, but because he says things people actually want to hear — in a voice that's unmistakably his own. You can't manufacture that with a three-person consulting firm and nonprofit money. Authenticity isn't a line item in a budget.
The most damning critiques aren't coming from the right. They're coming from inside the house.
One Democratic digital consultant acknowledged to the Daily Mail that the handover of the accounts was clumsy, but insisted on the importance of using the resources:
"We have a lot of catching up to do."
Political strategist Kaivan Shroff wrote in an op-ed on MS Now:
"Instead of pandering to young voters with more 'slop' content, Democrats need to do the harder work of investing in long-term, non-stop, youth organizing."
And Democratic consultant Mike Nellis offered perhaps the most quietly devastating assessment:
"If it's just another meme account then it's really just piling on what's already out there, which is fine."
"Which is fine." Not exactly a ringing endorsement. When your allies describe your big relaunch with the enthusiasm of someone accepting a mediocre appetizer at a dinner party, you haven't sparked a movement. You've created overhead.
This is what Democrats do now. They lose an election, then convince themselves the problem was packaging rather than product. The Harris campaign already tried this once — remember "Brat Summer" and the coconut tree memes? The internet had fun for a few weeks. Then voters went to the polls and chose someone else.
Now the same people who ran that digital operation have formed a consulting firm, partnered with a Soros-funded organization, taken control of accounts worth serious money, hired staff who must love both "fighting fascism" and "online culture," cycled through three handles in a matter of days, and produced a launch so awkward that CNN anchors roasted it on air.
The Democratic Party's digital problem isn't branding. It isn't handles or hashtags or knowing the right slang. It's that they keep building elaborate megaphones with nothing to say through them — and charging handsomely for the construction.
The consultants will do fine. They always do.