Dem
51
GOP
49
This is the last of the preliminary rounds. If you care to review any of the other opening groups, here they are:
And now, the last set of presidential slogans:
Hope (2008): In 2008, Barack Obama ran the most effective presidential campaign of the 21st century (at least, so far). He's the only presidential candidate since Bill Clinton to win the popular vote by more than 5% (he won by 7.3%) and also the first since Clinton to win more than two-thirds of the electoral votes (he won 365 of 538, or 67.8%). There was a time when that was a garden-variety solid victory, but under current, hyper-polarized circumstances, it's a rout. And Obama did it by first dispatching the ultimate Democratic insider in Hillary Clinton, and then defeating a fairly popular Republican with crossover appeal in John McCain.
The "Hope" slogan, and the ubiquitous (and often parodied) poster by Shepard Fairey, were a huge part of establishing Obama's "brand." If your campaign is going to have a four-letter theme that starts with "h," it is much easier to peddle "hate." But that has significant limits in terms of how much support it can attract, and how long it will be effective. Meanwhile, if a politician can actually persuade people that he or she represents "hope," that is powerful stuff indeed, as Franklin D. Roosevelt could attest. Of course, that did not stop Obama's enemies from weaponizing hate. Indeed, with the 44th president laying claim to the yin, it's not surprising that his opponents decided the yang was all they had.
Feel the Bern (2016): "Feel the Bern" was also about hope, of course, given that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was running on a better and more egalitarian version of America's future. Of course, Obama went 2-0 and Sanders went 0-2, so it may be hard to imagine that "Feel the Bern!" was more impactful than "Hope."
Still, before you reach your conclusions, hear us out. Sanders' campaign got a lot of young people engaged in the political process who might not otherwise have been. In the elections since, the participation of younger voters has trended upward. So, it could be that Sanders' campaign will have a long-term impact that stretches over multiple decades. On top of that, Sanders and his movement forced the Democrats to pay attention to the progressive wing of the Party; that hadn't been happening since sometime before the Clinton years.
Jeb! (2016): There were a number of contenders for this slot. In particular, we would really have liked to include a Hillary Clinton slogan, but we just were not persuaded that "Love Trumps Hate" or "I'm With Her" had all that much impact. Ditto Joe Biden's "Build Back Better." These all come off as kind of clumsy to us.
And so, if we're going to go with clumsy, then let's go with one of the two clumsiest slogans in American political history (the other one is AuH2O). Jeb Bush was supposed to be the chosen one, but he struggled to gain traction, and he took a fair bit of damage due to the attacks made by Donald Trump, particularly the mockery of Bush as "low energy." Consequently, the Bush campaign launched the worst rebranding in American political history, trying to counter the "energy" bit by putting an exclamation point after Jeb's first name. This did not counter Trump, it just made Jeb! into an object of ridicule (that continues to this day, 6+ years later). He was toast within the month.
It is not often the case that a political campaign makes an unforced error this damaging, particularly with a slogan. It is true that Jeb! already had his back against the wall when his marketing team attempted its reboot. However, was he really in that much worse a position than Joe Biden was heading into South Carolina in 2020? And after Bush's demise, the Republican establishment's last, best hope of derailing Donald Trump was gone.
Make America Great Again (2016): Most readers will not be fans of this slogan, but there is no questioning the enormous impact of "Make America Great Again," which was an absolutely brilliant bit of politicking. It recalls St. Ronnie of Reagan, allowing Donald Trump to lay claim to his legacy. It can be reduced to an instantly recognizable acronym—and Twitter hashtag. It fits well on a baseball cap.
Perhaps most importantly, the slogan seemed to commit Trump to a bold policy agenda, while actually committing him to no policy agenda at all. His campaign never made it entirely clear when America was last "great," or how we would know when it had become "great again." And that lack of substance carried over into the Trump presidency; tax cuts for rich people, xenophobia, a coarsened political discourse, and a few dozen miles of border wall are hardly the stuff of a return to greatness. And yet, the base still loves their champion.
The latest ballot is here. If you have comments on this group of slogans, please pass them along. (Z)