Brand Me a Liberal

Last week, Kevin Drum mused about the conservative success in creating and perpetuating a "brand" of politics that has become conventional wisdom, and the failure of liberals to do the same.

So our brand is never going to be as strong as theirs. Sure, egalitarianism will always be at its core, but that expresses itself in different ways in different times. It's opposition to slavery in one era, support for women's suffrage in another, and a push for national healthcare sometime after that. These may all spring from a roughly similar impulse, but their political manifestation is so different that it's hard for most people to see that.

So today's liberals want to fight global warming, something we didn't even know existed 50 years ago. We're for reproductive rights and gay marriage, things we didn't care about a century ago. We support more humane immigration laws, something that wasn't even on anyone's radar screen two centuries ago. There's just no way to take a history like this and turn it into a timeless brand. Yes, we're generally for the have-nots — though even that's been suspect over the past few decades — but beyond that I'm not sure there's much more long-term branding we can do. For good or ill, adaptable but fuzzy might just be part of the package.

Someone took him up on the challenge:

Bob Somerby thinks that liberal branding isn't as hard as some of us think:

For ourselves, we think it’s very easy: The people, not the powerful! You have to explain where things go from there, of course.

Yep. You have to explain where things go from there. But that's the whole problem, isn't it?

Actually, I think that's exactly what liberals have been missing: 8 short, punchy syllables that will fit on a bumper sticker in readable-at-60-mph font size.

And it covers everything. You don't even have to know what the issue is: if the powerful are for it, liberals are against it. If the powerful are against it, liberals are for it.

Yes, it's simplistic. Name a GOP brand meme that isn't simplistic. Simplistic wins. It's also easily misinterpreted by morons - in liberals' favor. Win again.

Have you made calls for your Democratic Congressional candidate today?