Whether we like to admit it or not, branding has an oversized influence on how we see the world and what products we decide to bring into our homes.
One of my favorite scenes that expresses our lack of real choice is in the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada, where Meryl Streep’s character Miranda Priestly, in a now-classic monologue and face-melting read, explains to her new and unstylish assistant, Andrea, that any novel ideas we all may have around choice is really nothing other than illusion. Long before we walk into any store or fill up any online cart, our ideas of what we like and why have already been decided by those that are filling up magazine pages and commercials. We’re selecting our latest look from a predetermined bin of “stuff.”
What was true in The Devil Wears Prada and the elite world of fashion is indeed also true in politics.
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The two brands of our two-party political system each have spent centuries branding and rebranding their core values and messages. People aligned with that messaging then adopt the principles and values of their chosen party.
Over recent decades, however, we have watched as the Republican Party became more adept at shortening its message for an audience with a diminishing attention span. Former Georgia GOP gubernatorial candidate Kandis Taylor, who lost her primary in April, had one of the most outrageous (but not off-brand for Trump Republicans) campaign slogan: Jesus, Guns, Babies. Yes, that was her real campaign slogan.
It was a distillation of the conservative rhetoric that we have heard for years. Republicans are pro-life, pro-gun, and have co-opted Christianity and “family values.” However reductive (and often misleading), it’s effective messaging.
Conversely, Democrats’ messaging has long been a problem, as it has been framed in opposition to Republicans rather than one that proudly pushes its own agenda. They are the party of “We’re not them,” as opposed to clearly and unequivocally stating who they are on their own terms. In doing so, Democrats have ceded way too much ground to Republicans on value phrases that appeal to voters—and that includes everything from religion to “patriotism.”
However, the MAGA movement presents Democrats with a golden opportunity to reclaim the word and the values of patriotism.
After all, Republicans under the twisted ideology of Trump and MAGA have contorted themselves into a party that is truly unrecognizable from the Reagan era—presided over by the GOP’s previous Dear Leader. But Republicans have moved from hailing the flag and our troops, to weaponizing it to brutalize law enforcement while calling for the hanging of the vice president—one of the most conservative politicians in America. They went from “Blue Lives Matter” to calling the FBI crooked and threatening to defund them. They went from “Lincoln freed the slaves” to hailing a twice-impeached, racist, misogynist crook as their new savior. And now, scores of candidates in the “Law and Order” party are threatening to not accept election results (if they lose), unpatriotically undermining American democracy to cynically attempt an illegal power grab.
As Republicans continue to sow distrust in our institutions—and the idea of America itself—Democrats remain on their heels, grappling for messaging that conveys who they are and what they stand for. This listless foot-dragging isn’t just infuriating—at this late date, it’s dangerous.
True patriotism requires more than heading to an Old Navy to grab an American flag T-shirt and matching pants. True patriotism is fighting for the ideals that this country was founded on, and is still trying desperately to live up to.
The Jan. 6 Committee, with its dogged, fact-based investigation and presentation, is the best example of virtuous American patriotism I’ve seen—outside of a battlefield—in ages.
And yet, this is not how Democrats have been selling this fight to the American people. Republicans have been able to once again take up their charge of a “witch hunt” in their defense of Trump, while Democrats have not taken the mantle and the microphone to name themselves as the true fighters for Democracy—America’s last defense against a white-Evangelical Christian fascist regime.
As Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has stated, the MAGA Republicans believe America to be a “Christian nation,” and they define the American identity as one built on “uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions,” as a draft document from Greene’s America First caucus put it in 2021. (Anglo-Saxon, of course, being a euphemism for “white.”)
Well, for a country whose demographics are shifting rapidly away from whiteness this new moniker should be the siren call to Americans and the Democratic Party to wake up and reclaim our true American values formulated around “we the people,” and make it clear that we’ll “fight like hell” to defend our beloved country, which sits on the brink of a neo-fascist takeover.
Branding matters. Messaging matters. It’s the difference between choosing one shirt over the other and one party over the other.
But right now, the choice we make this November isn’t just between dueling parties—it’s a fight for what it means to be an American.
MAGA Republicans' idea of “patriotism” includes white supremacists in tactical gear standing at the ready prepared to brutalize our fellow Americans into submission. This is not hyperbolic. Just look at Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who is currently on trial for sedition over his group’s terroristic actions on Jan. 6.
Audre Lorde—who branded herself as a Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, and poet—once said that if people don’t define themselves for themselves they will be crushed into others fantasies of who they are and be eaten alive.
Going into an election that very well could be the last free and fair contest of our lives, Democrats’ message should be clear: “We are the real patriots, fighting for your right to choose, to love, to exist, to live free—join us.”
