Why Democrats are in desperate need of a rebrand
Plus: Amid Trump’s trade war, Canadian stores are labeling their goods with maple leafs and a “T” for tariff
Hello, in this issue we’ll look at the Democratic Party’s brand problem and what some Democrats say the party should do about it, and how Canadian grocery stores are updating their labels thanks to Trump.
Scroll to the end to see: the last Republican presidential candidate to use a flower as a campaign symbol 🌻
Why Democrats are in desperate need of a rebrand
The Democratic Party’s approval rating has never been lower.
That was the takeaway from an NBC News poll released Sunday that found just 27% of registered voters have a positive view of the Democratic Party, the lowest that figure has been since NBC News began polling on the question in 1990. The abysmal 39% of registered voters who have a positive view of the Republican Party looks practically unassailable in contrast.
Obviously, major parties aren’t popular in an era of declining trust in institutions, but Democrats have the lower of the two major party’s approval ratings due to negative views from two groups that may seem at odds: a 56% majority of independents view the party negatively and so do 20% of self-identified Democrats. And therein lies the problem. How can the Democratic Party rebuild its grand coalition ahead of the 2026 and 2028 elections when the hate is coming from its center and left?
“With these numbers, the Democratic Party is not in need of a rebrand. It needs to be rebooted,” Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt told NBC News. While the poll had plenty of negative news for President Donald Trump — a slim 51% majority of registered voters disapprove of him and he has negative ratings on his handling of foreign policy, the economy, and inflation — Trump at least has his party behind him, with 90% of Republicans approving of the job he’s doing. “Democrats are the ones in the wilderness right now,” Horwitt said.
Various elected Democrats and factions in the party are presenting their vision for the future. The moderates or those tacking to the center are doing podcasts and the progressives going on tour, while on social media, the Democratic Party’s official accounts are attempting to kick some ass. The official TheDemocrats accounts on Instagram and X updated their avatars last week from the party’s official circular Democratic D logo to a blue icon of its Thomas Nast-assigned mascot, the donkey, and the accounts have a new, more salty and combative brand voice.
The Cybertruck at Trump’s in-kind White House infomercial for Tesla last week was described by the Democratic Party’s X account as an “ugly ass truck,” and their conception of Trump in their content is that of a short-fingered vulgarian running the economy into the ground. Most Americans don’t like Trump, and they’re leaning into it. A 65% majority of self-identified Democrats want their party to stick to their positions even if this means not getting things done in Washington, the NBC News poll found, up from 33% at roughly this point in Trump’s first term. At least when it comes to social media content strategy, they’re trying to deliver a version of that.
Moderate Democrats hope the party moves more to the middle. Last month at a retreat, the center-left think tank Third Way produced a memo obtained by Politico charting their view of the Democratic Party’s comeback. According to the group, Democrats have a cultural disconnect with working class voters because of factors like an overemphasis on identity politics, letting the far left define the party, and perhaps of particular note ahead of America’s 250th birthday next year, a lack of a positive message about national identity.
“Democrats focus too much on America’s flaws (racism, sexism, inequality) without acknowledging the country’s progress and potential, making them seem pessimistic and unpatriotic,” the memo read. Democrats can culturally reconnect with the working class, the memo’s authors wrote, by highlighting “similarities between marginalized groups and mainstream American values” and embracing “patriotism, community, and traditional American imagery,” like farms and Main Street.
Running patriotic opposition against a Republican Party unified behind the first felon president who’s dismantling the state, diminishing America’s place in the world, and expanding the power of the executive branch after pardoning criminals who sought to overturn the peaceful transfer of power seems like it shouldn’t be hard, and yet here we are. Next year, the Democratic Party and liberals more broadly have a once-in-a-half-century opportunity to celebrate the best of America and present a more optimistic, compelling, and complete story about its past and future than Republicans, and they ignore doing so at their peril.
Party postmortems don’t always get all the symptoms and remedies right. After all, after former Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) lost the presidential election, a post-2012 election autopsy called for the Republican Party to become more inclusive and support immigration reform, but Trump ended up winning in 2016 as a nativist who campaigned on the fantasy of building a border wall that Mexico would supposedly pay for that was never actually built.
From the left, then, Democrats might point to former Vice President Kamala Harris’ ineffectual outreach to disaffected Republicans in 2024 as proof the party needs to worry more about activating its base than reaching out to the center right. But why not do both?
While political professionals and junkies often view politics as a blue-to-red spectrum from left to right, voters, especially the ones who decide elections, tend to fit less into tidy party boxes than those in Washington, D.C., might assume. Bernie-Trump voters are a thing, and they and other swing voters are often swayed more by personal appeals and personality than straight partisanship as defined in your college political science class. To win national elections, Democrats need to win these and other voters back.
The Democratic Party is in dire need of a reboot, but the solutions to its problems don’t necessarily lie somewhere along a strict left-vs.-right dichotomy, but instead in pursuing both sides of the spectrum at once. To rebrand in politics means building a bigger tent.
Previously in YELLO:
Amid Trump’s trade war, Canadian stores are labeling their goods with maple leafs and a “T” for tariff
In Canada, President Donald Trump’s trade war has had an immediate effect on shoppers, many of whom are opting out of buying American products in protest. Some Canadian stores are even taking steps to make it easier for them to do so.
In a survey conducted this month by market research firm Leger, 68% of Canadians said they’ve reduced their purchases of American products in stores and 65% said the same of their online purchases. Additionally, 71% of those surveyed said they’ve increased their purchases of products made in Canada.
With tariffs set to inflate the price of goods produced internationally, “made-in” labels that note a product’s country of origin have become more important than ever. It’s led some retailers to experiment with new ways to inform shoppers about locally produced goods, like a black star that denotes European brands currently being used by one European grocery store operator.
Sobeys, a supermarket chain based in Nova Scotia, launched an in-store “So Canadian” promotion backed by a patriotic TV commercial to highlight the chain’s commitment to Canadian-made products that it labels with a maple leaf. Loblaws, a chain headquartered in Ontario, has done the same, and it created a specific “Prepared in Canada” page on its website for online shoppers who want to buy only domestically made goods.
Last week Loblaws said it will also begin adding a triangular “T” label to products that are pricier due to tariffs. Retailers faced consumer wrath when pandemic-era inflation set off a seemingly endless rise in prices, and the chain’s “T” label is a way to communicate to consumers why items now cost more.
“It’s simple: When customers see a ‘T’ on the price tag they know it has been directly sourced from the U.S. and impacted by tariffs,” Loblaws CEO Per Bank wrote in a post on LinkedIn. “Customers can be assured that when tariffs come off, any tariff pricing changes will be entirely removed.”
Bank noted that Loblaws is “pro-Canada and not anti-USA,” saying that the chain has “many trusted U.S. vendors,” but the updated labels reflect that the store is being responsive to the needs of its customers.
“Because of the tariffs imposed from the U.S., the Canadian government has been forced to put a range of retaliatory tariffs in place, on roughly $30B worth of goods… like poultry, dairy items, fruits and vegetables, and more,” he wrote. “This will unfortunately have consequences.”
No doubt one of those consequences will be U.S. brands taking a hit to their bottom lines.
Have you seen this?
America, the brand, is becoming toxic. Between boycotts, protests, and general animosity, the U.S. might be more unpopular internationally now than any time since the days of the Iraq War. Welcome to Pariahmerica. [Fast Company]
Ben & Jerry's alleges parent company CEO was fired over political posts in new court filing. The ice cream brand alleged that Unilever violated an agreement to give Ben & Jerry's board "primary responsibility" over its social mission and brand integrity. [NBC News]
This is going to ruin the tour. The Senate came together late Friday to pass a spending bill to avert a government shutdown, but the move has Democrats upset with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who’s now postponing his book tour. Meanwhile, Trump is speaking loudly, rattling his saber, and spilling on how he really feels about “Hamilton.” OK, diva. [Whig]
History of political design
"Dole for President" sunflower button (1996). The sunflower was used as a symbol of support for then-Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign because it's the official flower of his home state of Kansas.
A portion of this newsletter was first published in Fast Company.
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