Trump, meanwhile, supercharged the liberal desire to advertise loyalties, spurring into being an entire resistance economy of clever (they hope) content creators who set out to turn the 45th president’s antagonists into real-time heroes. “That was pretty much our business for the first two and a half years.” Even today, RBG iconography, from shirts to Halloween costumes, is the most recognizable part of the national liberal gift market. Someone said you should sell it.” His company was born. “I knew an illustrator, made 100 of them, gave them to my friends. “Seven years ago, I heard the story about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent collar,” said Nick Jehlen, who runs Resistance Pins, a top source of left-leaning novelties. The justice’s late-life emergence as a meme machine was irresistible for merch-makers and bag-buyers. Katanji Brown Jackson has only been on the Supreme Court for about a year, but she already has her own merch.Īnd it naturally owed a lot to our much-discussed national polarization: In Barrett’s surveys, one of the top reasons people gave for buying political sideline items was to bother specific family members.īut the boom was also a function of two people: Ginsburg and Donald Trump. It also was an accident of marketing: Progressive organizations popularized novelty gifts as a fundraising vehicle. Partly it was a function of new technology: Direct-to-garment digital printing lets creators print shirts on demand, meaning they can respond to the news and not worry about having to warehouse the gear. Not so long ago, Blue America was in a moment of peak merch. It turns out you can learn a lot from what people buy while they’re waiting for the cash register. There is no tote bag equivalent of the New York Times bestseller list, something that tracks customer data and offers a glimpse into where our culture and politics are headed. “For this gifting season, oh boy, we have a real lack of names,” Bridget Barrett, a University of Colorado advertising professor who researches political merchandise, told me. In fact, a lot of the most prominently displayed political icons this season have been dead a lot longer than Ginsburg: Abigail Adams, Alice Paul, Harriet Tubman. Want to read more stories like this? POLITICO Weekend delivers gripping reads, smart analysis and a bit of high-minded fun every Friday. Nonetheless, it’s hard to sustain the past decade’s liberal memorabilia craze with this cast of characters. And even though Ketanji Brown Jackson has only been on the Supreme Court for about a year, she was already on a tote bag. ![]() There were some goods depicting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sonia Sotomayor. Yes, the collection of political sock on display on Black Friday included folks like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, both of whom still draw a federal paycheck, even if their prospects of becoming the future of the American left have dimmed. But they’re all still big merch subjects. The Obamas have been out of the White House for seven years. Abrams was convincingly defeated in her second Georgia gubernatorial run. Anthony Fauci, who for a time generated almost as much impulse-purchase buzz, is retired. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is dead - and, in some circles, discredited. I suspect it might also have something to do with the roster of icons on display in the bookstores and gift shops of America’s blue metropolises.Īt least Yellen is still alive and on the job, which is more than you can say for a lot of the other souvenir stars. “When Trump first came into office, people felt like it could make a difference, but not as much now.” “I just sense that people are a little bit deflated and weary,” she told me. On the first weekend of the holiday shopping season, the store’s main line of political novelty socks was off by 36 percent compared with the same span last year. ![]() According to Leah Kenyon, the store’s buyer of sideline items - the refrigerator magnets and coasters and bobbleheads that tempt customers from a high-profile display near the front entrance - sales of politics merchandise is down in 2023 after a long boom. For the most part, the customers kept on moving.
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