Imagine going to a Beyoncé concert and having a political rally replace it instead. Or don't bother to imagine it, if you're one of the unfortunates in Houston who saw Bruce Springsteen do a couple of numbers for Kamala Harris this week on TV and expected at least a little entertainment at Shell Energy Stadium. 

The Harris campaign had promoted Beyoncé Knowles' appearance as a performance in support of Kamala's candidacy. NBC News reported that the pop singer would sing for her supporters on Thursday:

Pop superstar Beyoncé will appear with Vice President Kamala Harris at her event in Houston on Friday evening, according to three sources familiar with the plans. 

Beyoncé is also expected to perform, said one of the sources, who has direct knowledge of the preparations. The Washington Post first reported the news of Beyoncé’s appearance.

Beyoncé, who is from Houston, will appear as Harris has welcomed other musicians, like Bruce Springsteen and Eminem, to the campaign trail.

The Washington Post was a bit more careful, perhaps as a result of the "false rumors" that Beyoncé would perform on the final night of the Democrat convention. Their report on Thursday didn't include a suggestion that she would sing, but would "appear" at the rally:

The recording artist Beyoncé has agreed to appear Friday at a Houston rally for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, along with her mother, Tina Knowles, and country music icon Willie Nelson, according to people familiar with the planning who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview an appearance that hasn’t been publicly announced. ...

Harris officials say they hope a speech outside the seven battleground states — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina — will draw more media attention, as they conceded it has been difficult at times to break through the noise of a campaign that has focused almost exclusively on that handful of states.

It certainly may get media attention, but for the wrong reasons. Beyoncé did appear, but only as "a mother who cares deeply," USA Today reports:

"H-Town," Beyoncé declared to thunderous applause when she took the stage in a black blazer dress alongside fellow Destiny's Child member and Houston native Kelly Rowland.

"I'm not here as a celebrity. I'm not here as a politician. I'm here as a mother, a mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in, a world where we have the freedom to control our bodies, a world where we're not divided," Beyoncé said. ...

A campaign official said over 30,000 people attended the rally — Harris' biggest campaign event yet. 

Let's take that crowd-size claim at face value for now, but this cuts a number of different ways. Does anyone think that 30,000 turned out to Shell Energy Stadium to hear Kamala Harris speak? Or did they turn out because they expected to hear Beyoncé perform and get a chance at a free-but-short concert from a pop superstar? That certainly was the expectation set by the campaign, intentional or not. And if many of those attendees didn't get what they expected, how happy were they when they left?

We can test that by seeing the crowd reaction when they discovered that Beyoncé wouldn't perform. They pronounced themselves very burdened by what had just been:

JUST IN: Kamala Harris’ rally in Houston, Texas descends into chaos as she fails to control the rally attendees.

Boos and yelling were heard at the rally as Harris failed to calm down the rowdy crowd.

It’s unclear at the moment what exactly is going on. pic.twitter.com/9RIg7QIkf5

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 26, 2024

Kamala was getting boos when people realized they were lied to and Beyoncé wasn’t going to sing 🤣 pic.twitter.com/NzyMgHJVTC

— cr0ssed (@cr0ssed) October 26, 2024

People were heckling Kamala like crazy all night…the secret service was stressed out pic.twitter.com/Dvk9zv960o

— Alex Stein #99 (@alexstein99) October 26, 2024

Anyone seeing joy in the offing here?

All of these attendees could have watched Kamala speak from their own living rooms, if that's what interested them. They were there for Beyoncé the singer, not Beyoncé the "mother who cares."

As for the claim of 30,000 attendees, that runs into another problem. Shell Energy Stadium has a maximum capacity one-third smaller than the crowd Team Kamala claims to have drawn:

Shell Energy Stadium is a state-of-the-art, open-air stadium designed to host Houston Dynamo FC matches, Houston Dash matches and Texas Southern University football games as well as additional professional, collegiate and community sporting events, concerts, exhibitions, conventions and special events. Opened on May 12, 2012, the 340,000-square foot, 20,656-seat stadium was the first soccer-specific stadium in Major League Soccer located in a city’s downtown district.

Houston Public Media puts the stadium's "maximum capacitor" a little higher at 22,039, perhaps to account for field seating at this event and concerts. Either way, this venue can't fit anything close to 30,000 people -- and the campaign should know those numbers, too. They have to calculate capacity when choosing venues, and that is a very delicate business. If you choose a venue that's too small, you lose the ability to show off big crowds. Choose a venue that's too large, and it looks unenthusiastic. It's telling in and of itself that the Harris campaign chose such a limited venue for a rally with Beyoncé and Willie Nelson (who did perform). That makes it seem as though most of the crowd was there for the entertainers rather than Harris herself. (The stadium was clearly at capacity, as video from before Beyoncé's brief appearance shows.)

So was this a bait-and-switch, or better yet, a Bey-t and switch, by Team Kamala? You'd have to ask the people who attended, but it would hardly be the first one or worst one pulled by Democrats in this cycle. They spent months shoving Joe Biden down their throats in primaries and caucuses rigged against any competitive challengers, and then pushed him aside for Harris as soon as the cover-up of his cognitive incapacity got exposed. Perhaps Democrat voters are just getting used to being defrauded. 

And besides, Kamala isn't performing in Texas either.