Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

BMG Trump Slogan Challenge

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It has been said that the only way to defeat an idea is with a better idea.

So here’s a contest open to all members and friends of BMG.  We need a new slogan in 10 words or less to challenge Trump’s: ” Make America Great Again.”   We throw down the gauntlet today to do justice to our sacred Declaration of Independence in common cause against tyranny everywhere.

Our search was inspired by the words of David McCullough regarding Lincoln, FDR and JFK’s ability to find idioms that reached ordinary non-college educated people and elevate them to think higher about their country. ( As well as by Dermot Shea, the first head of the Massachusetts Consumer’s Council under Governor Chubb Peabody.)

So come on BMGr’s !  There’s more to progress than policy.  There’s down in the soil small-‘d’ democratic politics to contend with as well.  Can we collectively come up with a slogan that steals folks back from the alt-right before they slip into their hands ?

Fred  Rich  LaRiccia

Terry McGinty

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  2. You’ve put your finger on the notion that there is an entire rhetorical style that the Democrats are utterly missing: an eloquence that combines real ideas, expressivity, values — and which is memorable. That was Ted Sorensen’s great gift. We can quote JFK all day, even though his rhetorical style was much, much loftier than anything you’ll hear today — certainly from our grunter-in-chief, who nonetheless found his audience. Speaking from the gut beats a corporate boardroom PowerPoint; but that doesn’t mean it’s something to emulate.

    (Don’t get me started on the tinny, brittle, academic cant that’s made a comeback on the Bernie-left. “Neoliberalism!!” Rather than trying to grow a coalition through shared values, it seems aimed at identifying a “knowledgable” in-crowd. Seen that movie, thanks very much.)

    I think when you’re sloganeering, you actually have to step back and take stock of the values you’re trying to encapsulate. This requires care. The shorter the speech, the more time required to craft it. (If only we applied this to Twitter.)

    • Effective rhetoric need not be lofty. ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country’ utilizes words a 3rd grader would be familiar with in an elegant but understated parallelism.

      Some of the best modern progressive orators in my book are Bill Clinton, who’s 2012 convention speech (‘it takes a lot of brass to take credit for something we did’) and 2004 speech (‘we must lead by the power of our example rather than the example of our power’) stay with me.

      We will fight for you and protect you from big business. We will fight for you and protect you from unfair competition. We will fight for you and protect your jobs. We will fight for you and protect your family’s health. We will fight for you and your child’s schools.

      Keep it simple, and use the language of securing freedom. People want to be free from fear, and that means securing them from uncertainty. The fact that insurance companies get this (Nationwide is on your side, Allstate you’re in good hands) shows us how the Democratic Party can adapt to the new political marketplace.

    • To paraphrase Mark Twain — “I know I promised you a short letter. I didn’t have time, so I’ve sent you a long one instead.”

  3. “A fair deal for everyone”

    Paraphrasing (and updating) Teddy Roosevelt, speaking prophetically in 1914 (emphasis mine):

    I stand for the square deal. But when I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service. One word of warning, which, I think, is hardly necessary in Kansas. When I say I want a square deal for the poor man, I do not mean that I want a square deal for the man who remains poor because he has not got the energy to work for himself. If a man who has had a chance will not make good, then he has got to quit. And you men of the Grand Army, you want justice for the brave man who fought, and punishment for the coward who shirked his work. Is that not so?

    Now, this means that our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics. That is one of our tasks to-day. Every special interest is entitled to justice–full, fair, and complete–and, now, mind you, if there were any attempt by mob-violence to plunder and work harm to the special interest, whatever it may be, that I most dislike, and the wealthy man, whomsoever he may be, for whom I have the greatest contempt, I would fight for him, and you would if you were worth your salt. He should have justice. For every special interest is entitled to justice, but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to representation in any public office. The Constitution guarantees protection to property, and we must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation.

    The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have called into being.

    There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done.

    We must have complete and effective publicity of corporate affairs, so that the people may know beyond peradventure whether the corporations obey the law and whether their management entitles them to the confidence of the public. It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs.

    This spoken by a REPUBLICAN president. How times have changed.

  4. We need a new slogan in 10 words or less to challenge Trump’s: ” Make America Great Again.”

    I’m not at all convinced that such a slogan exists, nor, if it exists, would be an appropriate, or indeed direct, challenge to Trumps “Make America Great Again,” since that slogan is a bald-faced, racist and sexist, lie. It would kinda be like leading off with “Yes, I have stopped beating my wife! Thanks for asking!” Only in Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant have American actions ever aspired to match American rhetoric…. and look what happened there…

    Any progressive slogan would likely fall somewhere between “shut the fuck and eat your vegetables” and “grow up.” Until people are willing to face the truth about Americas ‘greatness’ I’ll stick with “Black Lives Matter,” and “I’m with her.”

    • “Every American First”
      “Putting People First”
      “People, Not Profits”
      “A Government, for the rest of us”
      “For the many, not the few”*

      *UK Labour stole from Democrats before, we can steal from them. I also like linking to an inclusive global populist movement against austerity and elites

      • Yeah, but if Joe Biden is at all considering trying one more time, references to Dems stealing from Labour might hit a bit close to home:)

    • Fair enough. But although my candidate for slogan, “Make America Good Again” directly plays off Trump’s, s slogan need not do so.

      • :”America Will Be ” is the last line of my favorite Langston Hughes poem : Let America Be America Again. It makes a sacred oath to sacrifice our ‘ lives, fortunes and sacred honor’ so that ALL our citizens can enjoy the blessings of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’

  7. “Justice For All”

    That ought to cover all the issues at the forefront and more of the Democratic Party.

    If women are not paid equally to men, there is no “Justice For All”.

    If women do not have control over their bodies, there is no “Justice For All”.

    If any citizen is deigned the right to marry the person they love, there is no “Justice For All”.

    If anyone is working full time but cannot afford the basic costs of life, there is no “Justice For All”.

    Without healthcare as a right, as held by every other citizen of the developed nations of the world, there is no “Justice For All”.

    When we are judged not by our accomplishments and potential but by the color of our skin, our faith, our ancestors. there is no “Justice For All”.

    I could go on for days. with this,

    The cure for poverty is not hard work, it’s justice, justice for all.

    To quote George Monbiot, “If hard work and enterprise made one wealthy, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire.”

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