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Oh no.

In the midst of a reeling Republican presidential administration that may or may not be imploding in spectacular fashion even as you read this sentence, the Democrats have rolled out their slogan for the 2018 midterm congressional elections. My friends, the fight for the soul of this country is in the hands of people who came up with... this:

Congratulations to those of you who reflexively whispered "...Papa John's" before burying your head in your arms and sobbing quietly.

For God's sake, it's been only two weeks since the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee invited the Internet to vote on which inane resistance-themed Pinterest meme it should turn into a 2018 bumper sticker, and 13 days, 23 hours, and 59 minutes since the Internet responded by mercilessly roasting them for it. But instead of promptly firing every Don Draper knockoff involved in the creation of these abominations, the people charged with wresting control of the country from a senile bigot less than 18 months from today are indeed poised to roll out what sounds like a marketing tagline for Corinthian Colleges.

Given that "Make America Great Again" has become the preferred salutation at NRA events and has probably made the world's producers of generic red baseball caps into gazillionaires, I understand why Democrats feel the urge to craft some sort of hashtaggable one-liner to lead the charge. But obsessively tinkering with the slogan continues to ignore the problem, which is, as my colleague Drew Magary recently put it, that the Democrats still don't have a unified message other than some tepid variation of "Actually, we are the party of the white working class," "This is not normal," or "Hey, did we mention that we're not Donald Trump?" The Republican Party backs up its stupid slogans with substantive promises, and while I'll eat my shoe on Facebook Live if Mexico ever actually pays for the wall, simply taking a stand for something was enough to win control of the entire federal government. Meanwhile, the Democrats keep brainstorming vapid catchphrases and hoping that the next iteration will be more #viral than the last.

Voters want better skills, and better jobs, and better wages. (And better health care, and a stronger social safety net, and a fairer tax system, and so on and so forth.) But the party desperately needs to decide which policies it plans to support in order effectuate these outcomes, even if some of the more tantalizing possibilitiessingle-payer health care or a federal minimum wage hike or whateverare more aspirational at this particular moment in history than anything else. It's cool that the Democrats are not Donald Trump. Being something other than Donald Trump is great! Now, they need to figure out who they are instead.

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The Democrats Unveiled a New Slogan and It's Infuriatingly Stupid - GQ Magazine