Needed: More Liberal Totems for Speeches and Campaign Ads


The annual CPAC gathering, in which right-wing politicians gather to compete over who can best pander to the conservative id, started today. So Mitch McConnell, who desperately needed to demonstrate his bona fides to a skeptical audience, walked on stage waving a rifle. Paul Waldman comments:

Which got me thinking: Liberals really lack any talismanic physical objects they can display to their supporters to demonstrate their ideological bona fides….On the other hand, if you watched a hundred primary ads for a hundred Republican candidates from across the country, I’d bet at least 30 or 40 of them would have a gun in there somewhere.

….As a matter of fact, conservatives have lots of these kinds of identity markers that can easily and quickly communicate a whole set of beliefs to an audience when they’re mentioned, like the Bible or Ayn Rand or country music. The fact that Democrats don’t have these things is probably because their coalition is more diverse, made up of people with a variety of cultural backgrounds and life experiences. The markers that may unite certain portions of the Democratic coalition—like, say, the music of the recently departed Pete Seeger—are not anything close to universal within that coalition, so politicians can’t use them so easily.

Oh, I don’t know. We have wind turbines and Priuses, though I suppose those are too big to carry on stage. But that’s not all. Conservatives may have pictures of jars with dead fetuses in them, but we have pictures of dead birds covered with oil. Conservatives have fences along the border, we have lovingly arranged tableaus showing off citizens of every possible gender, race, age, and disability. Conservatives have country music, we have Bruce Springsteen.

But I’ll concede that this is pretty weak. Conservatives have guns, pocket copies of the Constitution, and the Bible to use as really handy props that instantly demonstrate their tribal affiliation. So why don’t liberals have similar, universally-recognized totems? Waldman may be right that it’s because our coalition is more culturally diverse, but I’d toss out one other possibility: almost by definition, conservatives are in favor of tradition and liberals are in favor of change. So it’s easy to find simple conservative props because every culture has lots of recognizable traditional icons that it’s developed over the centuries. It’s a lot less easy to find liberal props because icons of progress change every decade or two. Haul out a photo of FDR these days and half the audience wouldn’t know who it is. Put up a picture of a streamlined diesel locomotive and everyone would giggle. But if you use a picture of something new, it just won’t be universal enough.

But them’s the breaks. We still have Springsteen.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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