I’m an academic who studied the rise and branding of the Tea Party in news, but I’m not sure where to put this right now. Maybe in an article soon. I just want folks to know that, yes, Trump is a con man and he conned his supporters in some major ways. But that’s not all.

Yes, he’s a master brand strategist and that boosted him in a capitalist news ecosystem fixated on sensational news and easy to sell political brands. But that’s not all I think is important about Trump.

Trump sold himself as an outsider, as a person not beholden to the political establishment. That was a really crucial part of his brand. It still is— it’s why he gets away with spelling errors, bad speeches, PR fumbles — being unpolished is PART of his brand. It’s what sells him.

People trust con men when they’ve lost faith, when others have failed them, when institutions aren’t working, and they need a miracle.

Trump was chosen because he was seen as different from the kinds of people who just told you that $600 was enough to get through a pandemic.

Democrats make the mistake of thinking that they should be MORE LIKE their conservative opponents than differentiate themselves from them. Good branding relies on differentiation. And right now, so does good political leadership.

Otherwise, the American public continues to be just a good mark.
Marketing tends to analyze subgroups— and when you homogenize along demographic lines in political branding, you reduce white folks to simply being racist and Black folks to being staunch liberals.

Truth is there’s a lot more complexity there. Black folks hold a lot of socially conservative and religious views. Conservative White folks support a number of progressive policies if you break them down. And most Americans have a deep, abiding mistrust of our political leaders.

My point, I suppose, is that if we don’t grasp the extent to which Americans are dying for a political leader that will shake up our current political system, we will neither understand Trump’s appeal or how to contest the anti-establishment political brand in the future.

Obviously Bernie Sanders and AOC get treated like a marginal left-wing, but there’s a reason Sanders close to winning two Democratic primaries, & a reason why an internet troll like Donald Trump was elected president— also, it should be noted that Sanders polled better than him.

Part of the tension here is always down/ballot considerations versus winning the presidency, which I set aside as chicken vs egg. But I think if we don’t understand and discuss what anti-establishment really means in the current political climate, we miss a lot.