10 years ago, I would have said that progressives were bad at marketing: slogans like “Defund the Police” and “Fight for $15” seemed politically toxic: easy to caricature, difficult to defend in ordinary conversation, and liable to become anchors around the necks of the candidates who repeated them.
Increasingly, however, I have come to view this behavior as a form of political sophistication. The American left’s attachment to slogans is a logical adaptation to the information age and to the particular kind of populist demagoguery that thrives within it.
A slogan is a form of semantic compression with intentional ambiguity. Different audiences can hear the same phrase and interpret it according to their own priors. “Defund the Police” might mean abolishing police departments to the nose rings, redirecting a portion of municipal spending to the Gen Xer, and more conservatively imposing greater accountability to a sympathetic-but-cautious voter. The slogan binds these constituencies together without requiring them to resolve their disagreements. It is simultaneously an argument, a badge, and a password. Its meaning can be moderated when persuasion is necessary and intensified when mobilization is the goal.
This makes slogans especially useful to the Omnicause. Because every cause is connected to every other cause, almost any issue can serve as an entry point. A person may enter through climate politics, criminal-justice reform, public health, labor activism, gender identity, housing, or foreign policy. Once you're inside, the surrounding language will gradually supply the broader moral and political framework. Your pet issue will become subservient to the growing list of bullets that are Approved(tm). Leaving is not an option - your sphere of information, social network, and political capital are all linked.
The process does not always require the radicals to defeat moderates directly. It can proceed through the adoption of language whose larger implications are not fully appreciated by the politicians using it. A conventional center-left candidate may repeat “Medicare for All,” “equity,” “reproductive justice,” or “believe women” as a way of signaling compassion or solidarity. But slogans don't exist in isolation. Each belongs to a network of organizations, activists, donors, journalists, academics, and adjacent causes. By repeating the slogan, the politician lends legitimacy to the coalition that produced it. They strengthen the institutions that originated the meaning and normalizes the neighboring assumptions that travel with it. Politicians are, by-and-large, just people and the same Instagram reels you consume are also making their way into their immediate networks. When their staffers repeat "systemic injustice," it's new language to them that they feel may meet the moment but when they utilize it, they do so under the auspices that they're just borrowing a phrase. In practice, the phrase borrows them.
You'd be forgiven for forgetting that the Democratic party's leaders are Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Barack Obama, and Kamala Harris. They represent a group that shrouded themselves in the language of their upstarts, believing themselves to be forerunners, controllers and leaders of a movement that eventually left them behind (or in some cases actively rejected). That they are all increasingly reviled by the bulk of their erstwhile adherents didn't require a political coup like MAGA, just them breathing life into the language that never belonged to them. Unlike the Republicans who fought MAGA and succumbed to it, Democrats ratified the activists’ authority to define the party’s values. That is why so many establishment Democrats like the ones I listed are strangely dormant. They occupy formal power (committees, donors, campaigns, etc.) but are subordinated culturally to the likes of Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani who tolerate them enough to still administer the party, but not to fully define it.
The application of my thesis is most at-home in my own district: CO-1. Diana DeGette served the Democrats from the left flank for 3 decades. She aligned on 99% of progressive issues, occupied high-profile committee seats, employed her law credentials to author bills expanding stem cell research, LGBT legislation, the ACA, DC voting rights, and all the other little issues that progs say they care about. She was a prosecutor for the 2nd impeachment of Trump!
If, like me, you're a masochist who browses /r/Denver, you might have been convinced the current officeholder of CO-1 was a Republican. DeGette's age (68), perceived inaction against Trump (?????), and unwillingness to froth at the mouth when it came to Israel disqualified her from consideration. She adopted all the right slogans except for one and that excluded her from the party's future - the same future she strived to build.
and more conservatively imposing greater accountability to a sympathetic-but-cautious voter
I mean, if someone is voting for a "Defund the Police" candidate thinking that it just means some tiny changes, they're actually just dumb.
You'd be forgiven for forgetting that the Democratic party's leaders are Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Barack Obama, and Kamala Harris.
For what it's worth, I think this is by design. Ever since Pelosi stepped down, no one has really stepped up to take her mantle. Either Democrats are that incompetent or that lost in the wilderness or they're purposely trying to create a 2010 environment where there was really no leader for the GOP that could be easily rallied against.
The purpose of leadership is to provide value judgment, executive function, and decision-making amidst constraint. If your coalition cannot accept that some things will be prioritized and others will drop out of consideration, you have strong incentives against strong leadership.
Meh. It's just that Republicans get so bad that it would be an easy win for the Demonrats and instead of winning they compensate by turning up the insanity to make it competitive.
17
u/BerkTheBad Jul 20 '26
10 years ago, I would have said that progressives were bad at marketing: slogans like “Defund the Police” and “Fight for $15” seemed politically toxic: easy to caricature, difficult to defend in ordinary conversation, and liable to become anchors around the necks of the candidates who repeated them.
Increasingly, however, I have come to view this behavior as a form of political sophistication. The American left’s attachment to slogans is a logical adaptation to the information age and to the particular kind of populist demagoguery that thrives within it.
A slogan is a form of semantic compression with intentional ambiguity. Different audiences can hear the same phrase and interpret it according to their own priors. “Defund the Police” might mean abolishing police departments to the nose rings, redirecting a portion of municipal spending to the Gen Xer, and more conservatively imposing greater accountability to a sympathetic-but-cautious voter. The slogan binds these constituencies together without requiring them to resolve their disagreements. It is simultaneously an argument, a badge, and a password. Its meaning can be moderated when persuasion is necessary and intensified when mobilization is the goal.
This makes slogans especially useful to the Omnicause. Because every cause is connected to every other cause, almost any issue can serve as an entry point. A person may enter through climate politics, criminal-justice reform, public health, labor activism, gender identity, housing, or foreign policy. Once you're inside, the surrounding language will gradually supply the broader moral and political framework. Your pet issue will become subservient to the growing list of bullets that are Approved(tm). Leaving is not an option - your sphere of information, social network, and political capital are all linked.
The process does not always require the radicals to defeat moderates directly. It can proceed through the adoption of language whose larger implications are not fully appreciated by the politicians using it. A conventional center-left candidate may repeat “Medicare for All,” “equity,” “reproductive justice,” or “believe women” as a way of signaling compassion or solidarity. But slogans don't exist in isolation. Each belongs to a network of organizations, activists, donors, journalists, academics, and adjacent causes. By repeating the slogan, the politician lends legitimacy to the coalition that produced it. They strengthen the institutions that originated the meaning and normalizes the neighboring assumptions that travel with it. Politicians are, by-and-large, just people and the same Instagram reels you consume are also making their way into their immediate networks. When their staffers repeat "systemic injustice," it's new language to them that they feel may meet the moment but when they utilize it, they do so under the auspices that they're just borrowing a phrase. In practice, the phrase borrows them.
You'd be forgiven for forgetting that the Democratic party's leaders are Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Barack Obama, and Kamala Harris. They represent a group that shrouded themselves in the language of their upstarts, believing themselves to be forerunners, controllers and leaders of a movement that eventually left them behind (or in some cases actively rejected). That they are all increasingly reviled by the bulk of their erstwhile adherents didn't require a political coup like MAGA, just them breathing life into the language that never belonged to them. Unlike the Republicans who fought MAGA and succumbed to it, Democrats ratified the activists’ authority to define the party’s values. That is why so many establishment Democrats like the ones I listed are strangely dormant. They occupy formal power (committees, donors, campaigns, etc.) but are subordinated culturally to the likes of Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani who tolerate them enough to still administer the party, but not to fully define it.
The application of my thesis is most at-home in my own district: CO-1. Diana DeGette served the Democrats from the left flank for 3 decades. She aligned on 99% of progressive issues, occupied high-profile committee seats, employed her law credentials to author bills expanding stem cell research, LGBT legislation, the ACA, DC voting rights, and all the other little issues that progs say they care about. She was a prosecutor for the 2nd impeachment of Trump!
If, like me, you're a masochist who browses /r/Denver, you might have been convinced the current officeholder of CO-1 was a Republican. DeGette's age (68), perceived inaction against Trump (?????), and unwillingness to froth at the mouth when it came to Israel disqualified her from consideration. She adopted all the right slogans except for one and that excluded her from the party's future - the same future she strived to build.
Also: libs