this is from Farwests thread where we are talking about the GOP's ownership of the patriotism and individualism memes.

I suggest the following strategy of branding for the Democrats:

 I don't think the dems can beat the GOP branding as the "heritage American party"...the party you think of on the 4th of July, Veterans day, etc. The dems cannot compete here simply because the branding has "taken hold" and will be very difficult to dislodge.

I think the Democratic Party has to appeal to another archetype, one the GOP can NEVER lay claim to:

The Mechanic. The Repairman, the Technician, the person you call on when something is broken and needs fixing.

Dems are GOOD at governing. Its their specialty. They care about it. The history since the 20s is painfully clear: the republicans run things into the ground and then the dems come in and patch them up again.  Biden and Obama should shift gears and stress this point over and over again, we can fix things.
 
I suggest the Democratic Party symbol be modified:

 A donkey but have one hoof raised holding a wrench!  And that this be a permanent change in the Party's symbol.

 

Recently I have criticized the Republican Party in very harsh language and wish to counterbalance those attackw with a more balanced assessment. I define the modern GOP, as  that party that came into being with the first Taft, was reinforced by the second Taft, suffered a split in its house caused by the overwhelming popularity of the New Deal, then mended and consolidated into its present form in 1980 with the final marginalization of its moderate faction. In this analysis, the two Eisenhower administrations represent an anomaly.

Jason Everett Miller would appreciate that the advent of TR put the party into an identity crisis of sorts.  TR was never popular with the party infrastructure.  Despised actually is not too strong a word.  Hanna couldn't find a good word to say about him.  But he was a vote-getter and so the national party acquiesced with its own voter base and let the excitement run its course.  Taft was TRs pick and started out well and liberal for the party standards of the time, but it was the following convention of 1912 that the party had to ask itself "Who are we?" and they made a fateful choice...the choice that gave us what we have today.  TR and his legions bolted and became the bullmoosers, Taft, fatally weakened, lost to Wilson and the rest is history.

What is useful to  understand is that while the party is now unified it has a fatal schism running down its centre that must eventually bring it down.  That and demographic changes in the United States.

There are two republican parties actually, as well as two democratic parties.  Political scientists out there will recognize immediately whose disciple I am when I make that assertion. There is a national party and there are the local parties.  The two don't always share the same goals although they have greater cohesion now than at any time since WWII.   The national party is all about the maintainence, promotion, and defense of an politico-economic arrangement that was dealt a savage blow by the New Deal.  The local parties share in that goal, but also are concerned with governing qua governing.  The national party's raison d'etre doesn't play in Peoria so they have learned to be remarkable marketers...they sell 10-40 oil to consumers, labeling it as milk.  So far it has worked.  September 11 was tragic, but historians and political scientists may show it prolonged the electoral viability of the GOP beyond the time when the marketing should have begun to break down.

Changes in the demographics should eventually force the party into another adjustment but again, I suspect, it will be a marketing adjustment, rather than anything substantive.

Eventually the changing economic arrangements will cause the GOP to offshore itself.  This process actually is in progress and started in the 1980's at least.  The local franchise will still talk of local concerns, but the real focus of the party will be elsewhere.....

I have been guilty of condemning the GOP in the harshest of terms in recent posts, but want to make amends by posting this, more balanced, assessment of them.  

The modern GOP, is that party that came into being with the first Taft in the convention of 1912, was reinforced by the second Taft, suffered a post-war split in its house caused by the overwhelming popularity of the New Deal, then mended and consolidated into its present form in 1980 with the final marginalization of its moderate faction.

Jason Everett Miller would appreciate that the advent of TR put the party into an identity crisis of sorts.  TR was never popular with the party infrastructure.  Despised actually is not too strong a word.  Hanna couldn't find a good word to say about him.  But he was a vote-getter nonpareil and so the national party acquiesced with its own voter base and let the excitement run its course.  Taft was TRs pick and started out well and liberalfor the standards of the party, but it was the following convention of 1912 that the party had to ask itself "Who are we?" and they made a fateful choice...the choice that gave us what we have today.  TR and his legions bolted and became the bullmoosers/progressives, Taft, fatally weakened, lost to Wilson and the rest is history.

What people should understand is that while the party is now unified it has a fatal schism running down its centre that must eventually bring it down.  That and demographic changes in the United States.

There are two republican parties actually, as well as two democratic parties.  Political scientists out there will recognize immediately whose disciple I am when I make that assertion. There is a national party and there are the local parties.  The two don't always share the same goals although they have greater cohesion now than at any time since WWII.   The national party is all about the maintainence, promotion, and defense of an economic arrangement that was struck a savage blow by the New Deal. Whether that arrangement is beneficial to the people is, to me, a not-so-open question.  The local parties share in that goal, but also are concerned with governing qua governing.  The national party's raison d'etre doesn't play in Peoria so they have learned to be remarkable marketers...they sell 10-W40 oil to consumers, labeling it as milk.  So far it has worked.  September 11 was tragic, but historians and political scientists may show it prolonged the electoral viability of the GOP beyond the time when the marketing should have begun to break down.

The change in the economic arrangements on a global scale also present problems for the salesmen of the GOP.  The old meme was that the robust health of the American industrial infrastructure produced instant benefits for the American people.  Regulation was bad because it crippled the industries that hired, that gave pensions, that propped up the stock market.

With the change to internationalization of capital and the increasing legal detachment of economic powers from local national jurisdictions, that old selling point becomes increasingly defective.

So eventually, I think we will see the GOP offshore itself.  The process has already begun and started in the eighties actually.  The local franchise will still address, thru its marketing, local concerns, but the focus of the real party will be elsewhere.