Hillary’s public relations battles have, for decades now, been fought in that strange meta arena: We argue not about who she is, but about how people perceive her. We don’t debate whether she is genuine, but if people think she is.

To some extent, this is the default context for all political punditry. It is always easier to debate a nation’s mood than to do the hard work of sussing out its needs. But Hillary Clinton is an especially provocative case, in part because her campaigns and advisers, again and again, choose to meet the pundits and the media in that Thunderdome of perception rather than in the real world. Even when they want to fight in the real world, they beg to for a decision about perception: How do Brooklyn residents feel?

The Brooklyn video is, after all, yet another introduction of Hillary. And an introduction for a woman who’s been in the public eye for three decades only makes sense in the context of Hillary’s eternal reboot.

Advisers have been introducing her for so long, perhaps they forget that she’s never really left the stage.