“A Better Deal” is not the worst slogan I’ve ever heard, but it’s far from the best. The Democratic Party has overwhelming support from the “creatives” on Madison Avenue and the marketing geniuses in Hollywood. Why are Republicans so much better at coming up with pithy phrases that pack a punch?
It was not always thus. John F. Kennedy’s “New Frontier” and Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” were aspirational in a reach-for-the-stars kind of way; Barack Obama’s “Yes, We Can” invited Americans to feel good about themselves and their collective potential. “A Better Deal” leans in the right direction, but betterness is relative. Why cede rhetorical absolutism — “Make America Great Again” — to Donald Trump, on his way toward being remembered as the least-great president in our history?
Of course, the slogan is less important than the policies behind it. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., acknowledged Sunday that the party failed last year to get a clear message across. “When you lose an election with someone who has, say, 40 percent popularity, you look in the mirror and say, ‘what did we do wrong?’ And the No. 1 thing that we did wrong is we didn’t have — we didn’t tell people what we stood for,” Schumer said on ABC’s “This Week.”
At a kickoff event Monday in Berryville, Va., Democratic party leaders announced three initial policy priorities: Creating 10 million new jobs over five years, with new apprenticeship programs and a tax credit for employers who provide on-the-job training; “cracking down on the monopolies and big corporate mergers that harm consumers, workers and competition,” as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wrote in a Washington Post op-ed; and concrete action to lower the cost of prescription drugs, a big factor in rising health care costs.