“Omfg, they took our branding!” read an incoming all-caps text in one of my friend group chats last night. “We need to send a cease and desist,” read another. Just a couple of minutes earlier, Kamala HQ, Vice President Harris’s official campaign office, announced on X that “new merch just dropped.” The product in question was a Realtree camouflage snapback with the Harris-Walz logo embroidered in bright orange, which the singer Bon Iver just wore to perform at the campaign rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin this afternoon.
A couple of hours prior to the merch drop, Vice President Harris announced Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate in a video posted on social media. In the clip, Walz was wearing a camo hat, which commenters pointed out somehow sat perfectly at the intersection of the “Midwest dad” (Walz) and the “Bushwick gays” (basically my friend group).
Just last week while I was on …