If one stands back and peruses the use of the word "brand" as deployed in national politics today it may make you sick. It makes me sick.
Gone are the days in which the essence of an enterprise -- a political party -- is defined by its values and actions; today it is its faux public perception. It's what they talk about, not what they actually do.
Who would anybody with a brain ever let anybody be in charge of the country who fucking believes that men can menstruate, have babies, and should play in women's sports?
FFS, let's stop pretending these are small variations on the color of lemons. This is nuts. People who embrace stuff like this shouldn't be allowed to have plastic knives or drive cars.
The problem is this -- the Dems have no true, rock solid values. They're all about silly -- and often dangerous -- nonsense.
They are also corrupt AF. They are liars, thieves, and scoundrels.
Don't get me started on journalism -- not one honest member in the entire media outed Joe Biden as being hopelessly demented and unable to do the job of POTUS. Not only that, they covered for him.
Joe Biden wasn't "sharp" for one day of his corrupt, criminal life from birth. He was always a dimwit, the guy who graduated at the bottom of his class. They knew he was incapacitated. All of them were in on the hustle.
Do you have any idea how dangerous that was? How many stupid things got done -- Southern border -- because he was demented and unablke to govern? Who was running the country -- some liberal twats?
We deserve real men and women with character who believe in real values that are tested by time and truth. FFS, we can do so much better than the Dems.
I too hate the use of the word "brand" in these contexts. "Brand" is a word for how you sell something. It's symbolic and performative, not necessarily of deep meaning or substance.
You hit on why I think Democrats are using the word; because they can't otherwise say, "our values suck, and our policies suck." But they can create yet another euphemism and call the aggregate perception of these things their "brand." It allows them to do what they always do -- which is to claim that it's their messaging that's the problem, not their product!
It's always the messaging for them. If only people were smart enough to understand them! We just need a better marketing department!
And while there are multiple reasons they won't adapt their values and policies in the open, saying it's their "brand" allows them the flexibility to either lie about their moderation, and not moderate at all, or to clandestinely stop supporting things in the mainstream until they are back in power. But the underlying values always remain the same or continue leftward, because they are always too cowardly to confront their Marxists, communists and anarchists.
They want to be the "Compassionate Scholars" again, and don't like being the freaks on TikTok. They want the freaks on TikTok to be their grateful subjects, not the controlling elements of their party. That's what they mean by needing to "change their brand."
Great post, except . . . Grover Cleveland Alexander was a Hall of Fame pitcher named after President Grover Cleveland ;-) (He pitched for the Cubs at one time, BTW).
The truly gobsmacking thing about Penny Pritzker, Harvard, and anti-semitism: She's Jewish. Just proof that leftism trumps all. It is the real religion of Penny and her ilk
Am I the only one that thinks there is something "off" about that whole Pritzker family? They are pretty deep into far-left extreme causes like trans issues and abortion. Not to mention the cynical, deep lack of morals (like Jim Bob cheating his Chicago property taxes by ripping out his toilets in an unused mansion and conversation with Blago on FBI wiretaps musing about which high-level government position he could buy, with whatever Blago would bite on).
I'll bet that family has a whole boatload of secrets that could fill a bad Stephen King novel.
You are definitely not alone. They are great illustrations of F. Scott Fitzgerald's observation: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.”
I would push this further. Their wealth makes them largely unaccountable for both public and private behavior. They can get away with things that we cannot. They are largely immune from social pressure.
And they are not subject to the same reality feedback mechanism that we are. They can go on their merry way supporting causes that are destructive to the intended beneficiaries because they don't pay the actual cost. But they can feed their vanity by doing this.
It is not a coincidence, comrade, that the ultra-rich are now disproportionately ultra-left, and the richest jurisdictions in the US are Democratic Party strongholds. The Pritzkers are just a representative example.
Funny, but I just looked up Edith Wilson’s role in covering up the stroke that incapacitated her husband Woodrow Wilson. Just to illuminate how the Democrat playbook never changes, she arranged for reporter Louis Seibold of New York World to publish an “interview” of President Wilson to dispel rumors about his health. In fact, the whole interview was fabricated and Seibold never met with the President face-to-face, he was only given written answers to his questions by Edith Wilson. In reality the President was severely incapacitated at that time both physically and mentally.
And just to show how the leftist hive always protects their own, Louis Seibold won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting in 1921, and it’s still listed on the Pulitzer site! You can’t make this stuff up!
If you knew JB, you would not want to have a beer or be pals with him. Only reason anyone likes him is his wallet. I know people who went to law school with him. He was passed through, just like Chicago does with K-12 public school kids
I was friendly with JB for a few years when we both lived in Evanston. He has been a huge disappointment. He actually had some talent in tech investing and we had each had an investment in the same small company that turned out very well.
If you look at his campaign vs. Jan Schakowsky, he was a middle of the road, Clinton Democrat. Jan smeared him as a homosexual, which was not true, but she was (and is) a despicable wretched cretin, and that sort of thing worked in those days (still does for the D's)
Garber, who replaced Gay as Harvard's President, is also Jewish. So is George Soros, Noam Chomsky -- the list could go on. There is nothing new or unusual about it. The historical analogy was the Jewish kapos who collaborated with the Nazis in concentration camps in WWII, but at least in that case they had the excuse of wanting to avoid being exterminated.
One of the biggest fleecing schemes perpetrated by the Democrats (no thanks to AL Gore) is "climate control". Talk about funneling money to a bunch of government cronies!
"Democrats solve problems using the power of centralized government and organizations. Instead of believing in the power of the market, they try to harness the power of the market."
Control is what it's all about for them, using puppets in their media.
I wrote the other day on Facebook, after Nancy Pelosi spoke about Rahm running for President, that he's the only guy with balls and brains in that party who has a chance and they perceive the changing sentiments in the country to be about a tough guy, when the reality is the changing sentiments in the country are about electing somebody who is not a career DC beltway politician and is willing to stand up to career beltway DC political hacks.
Fortunately, thus far the Democrat Party is so out of touch with typical Americans that they continually misjudge and hopefully that will continue for at least a few more years while we get back on track.
I cannot say enough negative things about Governor JB - Jabba the Bloviator. What an obnoxious creature who called for violence and attempts to equate the present Administration with Nazism. He and his sister are stains on the Jewish people. If we were in middle school, I'd offer to meet both of them at the bike rack after school and drag my girlfriend with me to teach a lesson to Penny.
Unfortunately, Democrats are about destruction, poverty and violence.
"The Democratic brand is about one thing: pure, raw pursuit of and administration of political power over citizens."
Both parties today are driven by resentment. And zero-sumism. And power. MAGA isn't for anything other than the opposite of the Ds. Sometimes that's a fine start. But there's got to be some idea of what to do next. MAGA just doesn't have it. Other than tax cuts for the wealthy. Just look at DOGE. Could have been great, but at best fizzled. Trump is just selling access and pardons. For all of Clinton's issues he balanced the budget. Today all the pols are fine with tax increases for everyone's kids and grandkids. Truly some of the absolute worst and ineffective politicians across the entire spectrum.
I'd love nothing more than for that to be true. Tariffs are 100% coercion. Harassing universities - coercion. Letting crooks out of jail for $ - power. Most telling and possibly most important - minimal spending decreases (and multi-trillion $ deficits) - there is no reduction of government in people's lives.
Are you in on the TACO trade? Appears MAGA + Musk lasted less than 6 months. Imagine being the richest guy and blowing up your reputation and lots of your business for a guy who flops and folds and doesn't actually shrink the government.
If one stands back and peruses the use of the word "brand" as deployed in national politics today it may make you sick. It makes me sick.
Gone are the days in which the essence of an enterprise -- a political party -- is defined by its values and actions; today it is its faux public perception. It's what they talk about, not what they actually do.
Who would anybody with a brain ever let anybody be in charge of the country who fucking believes that men can menstruate, have babies, and should play in women's sports?
FFS, let's stop pretending these are small variations on the color of lemons. This is nuts. People who embrace stuff like this shouldn't be allowed to have plastic knives or drive cars.
The problem is this -- the Dems have no true, rock solid values. They're all about silly -- and often dangerous -- nonsense.
They are also corrupt AF. They are liars, thieves, and scoundrels.
Don't get me started on journalism -- not one honest member in the entire media outed Joe Biden as being hopelessly demented and unable to do the job of POTUS. Not only that, they covered for him.
Joe Biden wasn't "sharp" for one day of his corrupt, criminal life from birth. He was always a dimwit, the guy who graduated at the bottom of his class. They knew he was incapacitated. All of them were in on the hustle.
Do you have any idea how dangerous that was? How many stupid things got done -- Southern border -- because he was demented and unablke to govern? Who was running the country -- some liberal twats?
We deserve real men and women with character who believe in real values that are tested by time and truth. FFS, we can do so much better than the Dems.
Fuck the Dem brand. It's all make believe.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Yup. Virtue signaling at best. Sinisterly corrupt, evil, and totalitarian at worst.
Man, you nailed it! Well said!
I too hate the use of the word "brand" in these contexts. "Brand" is a word for how you sell something. It's symbolic and performative, not necessarily of deep meaning or substance.
You hit on why I think Democrats are using the word; because they can't otherwise say, "our values suck, and our policies suck." But they can create yet another euphemism and call the aggregate perception of these things their "brand." It allows them to do what they always do -- which is to claim that it's their messaging that's the problem, not their product!
It's always the messaging for them. If only people were smart enough to understand them! We just need a better marketing department!
And while there are multiple reasons they won't adapt their values and policies in the open, saying it's their "brand" allows them the flexibility to either lie about their moderation, and not moderate at all, or to clandestinely stop supporting things in the mainstream until they are back in power. But the underlying values always remain the same or continue leftward, because they are always too cowardly to confront their Marxists, communists and anarchists.
They want to be the "Compassionate Scholars" again, and don't like being the freaks on TikTok. They want the freaks on TikTok to be their grateful subjects, not the controlling elements of their party. That's what they mean by needing to "change their brand."
I think I hate the word "messaging" as much as I hate the word "brand."
You're right they want to be able to change their message and brand in any manner to garner votes because they have no bedrock values.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
"We deserve real men and women with character...."
We do. It's not Trump - pardons, crypto, hotels, etc.. Character is destiny.
No matter how much the great Rahmbo tries to redefine it/cover it up (see what I did there?), the Dems’ brand is “Lie. Cheat. Steal.”
He and the rest of the Chicago/Cook County Dems that have plagued our country can shove it straight up their asses.
Great post, except . . . Grover Cleveland Alexander was a Hall of Fame pitcher named after President Grover Cleveland ;-) (He pitched for the Cubs at one time, BTW).
The truly gobsmacking thing about Penny Pritzker, Harvard, and anti-semitism: She's Jewish. Just proof that leftism trumps all. It is the real religion of Penny and her ilk
Correct. Cubs are in first so I have baseball on the brain!
Yes we should enjoy it while it lasts! But remember that hopes differ from expectations, especially expectations based on long experience.
Am I the only one that thinks there is something "off" about that whole Pritzker family? They are pretty deep into far-left extreme causes like trans issues and abortion. Not to mention the cynical, deep lack of morals (like Jim Bob cheating his Chicago property taxes by ripping out his toilets in an unused mansion and conversation with Blago on FBI wiretaps musing about which high-level government position he could buy, with whatever Blago would bite on).
I'll bet that family has a whole boatload of secrets that could fill a bad Stephen King novel.
You are definitely not alone. They are great illustrations of F. Scott Fitzgerald's observation: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.”
I would push this further. Their wealth makes them largely unaccountable for both public and private behavior. They can get away with things that we cannot. They are largely immune from social pressure.
And they are not subject to the same reality feedback mechanism that we are. They can go on their merry way supporting causes that are destructive to the intended beneficiaries because they don't pay the actual cost. But they can feed their vanity by doing this.
It is not a coincidence, comrade, that the ultra-rich are now disproportionately ultra-left, and the richest jurisdictions in the US are Democratic Party strongholds. The Pritzkers are just a representative example.
Let’s start with their Superior Bank scandal. Hopefully if JB runs for president the Pritzker’s involvement in this bank failure is exposed.
Just like Biden's health was exposed? (To name just one of dozens of examples). The media is a bodyguard of liars that protects leftists.
Funny, but I just looked up Edith Wilson’s role in covering up the stroke that incapacitated her husband Woodrow Wilson. Just to illuminate how the Democrat playbook never changes, she arranged for reporter Louis Seibold of New York World to publish an “interview” of President Wilson to dispel rumors about his health. In fact, the whole interview was fabricated and Seibold never met with the President face-to-face, he was only given written answers to his questions by Edith Wilson. In reality the President was severely incapacitated at that time both physically and mentally.
And just to show how the leftist hive always protects their own, Louis Seibold won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting in 1921, and it’s still listed on the Pulitzer site! You can’t make this stuff up!
https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/fakery-in-american-journalism
If you knew JB, you would not want to have a beer or be pals with him. Only reason anyone likes him is his wallet. I know people who went to law school with him. He was passed through, just like Chicago does with K-12 public school kids
Well, if I did have a meal with him I would make sure to keep my arms and legs clear of his reach, just in case!
I was friendly with JB for a few years when we both lived in Evanston. He has been a huge disappointment. He actually had some talent in tech investing and we had each had an investment in the same small company that turned out very well.
If you look at his campaign vs. Jan Schakowsky, he was a middle of the road, Clinton Democrat. Jan smeared him as a homosexual, which was not true, but she was (and is) a despicable wretched cretin, and that sort of thing worked in those days (still does for the D's)
Garber, who replaced Gay as Harvard's President, is also Jewish. So is George Soros, Noam Chomsky -- the list could go on. There is nothing new or unusual about it. The historical analogy was the Jewish kapos who collaborated with the Nazis in concentration camps in WWII, but at least in that case they had the excuse of wanting to avoid being exterminated.
I am grateful that YOU wrote THIS essay,
as I will now no longer suffer the guilt of carrying it in my head and not writing it down!
With this essay, it also occurs to me that Sasha Stone should have you as a guest on her ‘Fourth Turning’ podcast.
happy to talk to her, but I don't know her! I have read the book
One of the biggest fleecing schemes perpetrated by the Democrats (no thanks to AL Gore) is "climate control". Talk about funneling money to a bunch of government cronies!
Also in Chicago you have the communist mayor Johnson celebrating Africa Day instead of Memorial Day. WTF?
"Democrats solve problems using the power of centralized government and organizations. Instead of believing in the power of the market, they try to harness the power of the market."
Control is what it's all about for them, using puppets in their media.
I wrote the other day on Facebook, after Nancy Pelosi spoke about Rahm running for President, that he's the only guy with balls and brains in that party who has a chance and they perceive the changing sentiments in the country to be about a tough guy, when the reality is the changing sentiments in the country are about electing somebody who is not a career DC beltway politician and is willing to stand up to career beltway DC political hacks.
Fortunately, thus far the Democrat Party is so out of touch with typical Americans that they continually misjudge and hopefully that will continue for at least a few more years while we get back on track.
I cannot say enough negative things about Governor JB - Jabba the Bloviator. What an obnoxious creature who called for violence and attempts to equate the present Administration with Nazism. He and his sister are stains on the Jewish people. If we were in middle school, I'd offer to meet both of them at the bike rack after school and drag my girlfriend with me to teach a lesson to Penny.
Unfortunately, Democrats are about destruction, poverty and violence.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/05/27/nolte-right-track-number-hits-50-first-time-poll-history/ interesting poll...50% of Americans think we are on the right track
"The Democratic brand is about one thing: pure, raw pursuit of and administration of political power over citizens."
Both parties today are driven by resentment. And zero-sumism. And power. MAGA isn't for anything other than the opposite of the Ds. Sometimes that's a fine start. But there's got to be some idea of what to do next. MAGA just doesn't have it. Other than tax cuts for the wealthy. Just look at DOGE. Could have been great, but at best fizzled. Trump is just selling access and pardons. For all of Clinton's issues he balanced the budget. Today all the pols are fine with tax increases for everyone's kids and grandkids. Truly some of the absolute worst and ineffective politicians across the entire spectrum.
Meh you prove one of my last points and we disagree. The MAGA movement isn't about power. It's about getting rid of DC power.
I'd love nothing more than for that to be true. Tariffs are 100% coercion. Harassing universities - coercion. Letting crooks out of jail for $ - power. Most telling and possibly most important - minimal spending decreases (and multi-trillion $ deficits) - there is no reduction of government in people's lives.
Tariffs have been around forever. Every country in the world uses them. Trump uses them as a negotiating point.
Are you in on the TACO trade? Appears MAGA + Musk lasted less than 6 months. Imagine being the richest guy and blowing up your reputation and lots of your business for a guy who flops and folds and doesn't actually shrink the government.
Imagine a competent person in charge.
https://x.com/SpencerHakimian/status/1927515764434829380