The message testing around the current veep is astounding for how garbled, overwritten and utterly malleable it is. So the level of gaslighting from the media and the Hollywood production staff tasked with this campaign sprint will have to be incredible — and it’s already showing itself in blatantly obvious ways.

Until fifteen minutes ago, the media readily acknowledged that Kamala Harris was far to the left of the country — note the first minute of this Norah O’Donnell interview as Harris first laughs off, then sits in stunned open-mouthed confusion as she’s confronted with the reality of her voting record. But this week the rating O’Donnell cited from GovTrack mysteriously just disappeared. And since it’s now a meaningful political liability instead of an act of scapegoating that one of Harris’s primary responsibilities was being tapped as “border czar” by Joe Biden, that has to get memory-holed, too. Already many of the same journalists, publications and networks who referred to Harris by that title now insist that it never happened — and they just never bother to correct themselves until right now. Soon enough, saying Kamala had any responsibility for the border crisis will be deemed Republican disinformation. You just misheard Joe Biden — maybe it was the mask.