Don’t let their sexy flannel shirts and those peppy Nirvana lyrics fool you: The 1990s were actually a moody time. The feminist intelligentsia were fiercely defending Bill Clinton’s cigar-tinted mayhem; America’s beer-drinkers had yet to lose the Culture War to the pot-dweebs; a young Dwayne Johnson was demanding we smell stuff; and Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn, Maxine Waters, and Bernie Sanders were all calling conservatives racists while pocketing taxpayer dollars by the fistful (well, some things never change).
The 1990s marked the end of one era and the beginning of another: It was the age of AOL dial-up, “Baywatch,” and grunge — when the Dallas Cowboys were good, the New England Patriots were bad, and women (we naively assumed) had vaginas.
More importantly, it’s also the last decade when popular culture was actually… popular.
There was no social media. No FOX News. No Daily Wire. No PJ Media. Aside from AM radio, no alternative voices whatsoever. In the beginning of the 1990s, everyone sang from the same hymn sheet because we shared the same experiences: We all knew who starred on late-night TV (hint: none of ‘em were named Jimmy), we all subscribed to the city newspaper, and we all fed from the same glutenous media trough. Johnny Carson kept his personal politics a secret, skewering both parties equally on “The Tonight Show,” and averaged 19 million viewers a night when he retired in 1992.
Back then, the US population was 256.5 million. Today’s population is over 333.3 million, and Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel’s combined late-night ratings are less than 3.3 million! The media ocean has grown far larger (no doubt due to climate change), but yesteryear’s media-whales have devolved into minnows.
This was the cultural backdrop when a plucky Georgia congressman named Newt Gingrich (arguably the most unfortunately-named politician since Rep. Dick Swett) nationalized the 1994 midterms.
The Democrats should’ve known they were in trouble from the get-go: Bill Clinton was an unpopular liberal president. There were foreign policy embarrassments galore: Mogadishu, Black Hawk Down, and Rwanda. Clinton broke his promise not to raise taxes. Furthermore, it seemed as it the Democrats’ priorities were totally out of whack: Our nation had just gone through a recession, yet the Democratic majority was preoccupied with gun control, gays in the military, bizarre social experiments, and government-run health care. There was a visceral disconnect between the Democrat’s DC cabal and the priorities of ordinary Americans.
But even though there was blood in the electoral waters, the liberal kingpins (and their media cheerleaders) still couldn’t fathom a scenario where they lost control of both branches of Congress. That sort of thing just wouldn’t happen! Okay, so maybe they’d lose 20 or 30 House seats and half-a-dozen in the Senate. Yeah, it would be bad… but survivable. Right? Come hell or high water, the Democrat’s legislative majority would surely prevail — just as it had since the 1950s.
Rep. Newt Gingrich, however, along with his legislative tag-team partner, Rep Dick Armey (arguably the most awesomely-named politician since Mayor Bill Boner), thought differently.
Gingrich and Armey brought all the GOP’s congressional candidates to the Capitol steps and announced a Contract with America: 8 reforms and 10 legislative promises that, if granted a Republican-majority, they swore to enact.
So, what did they propose?
None of the promises pertained to criminalizing abortion.
None mentioned gay rights.
None were for drug legalization, or any of the other hot-button cultural issue.
Instead, they were mostly procedural, legal, or economic, such as an honest accounting of the federal budget, truth in sentencing, tax credits, banning proxy votes in congressional meetings, and job creation. The kind of legislation that political pundits deem “boring” to Joe Sixpack (and his Schlitz-slurping neighbors in suburbia).
As a result, the GOP’s marketing message was simple and digestible: If you want a sane economic policy and a competent government, vote Republican. If you prefer the status quo, vote Democrat.
Meanwhile, the Democrats were whistling in the wind.
You could almost forgive the Democrats for their hubris: They had successfully controlled the House of Representatives for 40 straight years. A Republican takeover, they assumed, was utterly unthinkable.
Then, in November of 1994, the unthinkable occurred.
The Republicans flipped 54 House seats and 9 Senate seats. The Democratic House Speaker, Chairman of the Judiciary, and Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee were all defeated. Just as Fleetwood Mac had prophesied, it was a landslide. By nationalizing the election and forcing the voters into a binary economic decision, the GOP became the dominant party on Capitol Hill.
At least briefly.
Now, 30 years later, it's déjà vu all over again.
A deeply unpopular liberal president. Foreign policy disasters. Economic uncertainty. Chaos in the markets. Incompetence. An administration with misplaced priorities.
So let’s offer the voters another binary choice.
There’s a tendency to name economic periods after presidents. Sometimes, it’s catchy: Reaganomics. But other times, it’s a branding miscalculation.
This is one of those times.
President Biden tried to name it after himself. He really, truly tried! (The official White House website even proclaimed “Bidenomics is Working.” Even after he quit the presidential campaign, The New York Times continued with the naming, wondering “Can Kamala Harris sell ‘Bidenomics’?”
Don’t fall for it. In the immortal words of Admiral Ackbar: “It’s a trap!”
Inflation is sky-high. Gasoline prices are ridiculous. The financial markets have gone schizophrenic. There’s a hot war in Europe and military flashpoints are popping up everywhere. We’re barreling towards a recession, and the American people are begging for financial sanity.
This isn’t Bidenomics. It never was. This is bigger than Joe Biden, and quite frankly, he never deserved naming rights in the first place. (Half the time, he doesn't even know where his pants are.) This is a problem that’s exclusive to Democrats: Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, et al. It’s a partywide phenomenon.
So call it Demonomics.
And pin it to ALL the Democrats.
Demonomics is the policy of announcing plans to shut down oil companies over the next few years, while also demanding they make massive new investments in production, infrastructure, and capacity. It’s spending $1.9 trillion to stimulate the economy, mailing everyone free money, and then going “Surprised Pikachu” when inflation explodes.
It’s blaming Putin for everything and yourself for nothing.
It’s the policy of making our country dependent (again) on oil imports from unstable, anti-American regions, and then being baffled when the Oil Oligarchs maximize profits, price-gouge consumers, and weaponize their petro-Rubles. Demonomics is putting who’s-woke ahead of who’s-going-broke — and placing Green Peace ahead of greenbacks.
There’s no more pop culture in 2024. Pop culture is dead. Today it’s all cult-culture: Different niche groups in separate (but unequal) echo-chambers. Some of these groups still consume newspapers and cable news. Others are 100 percent online. And there are increasingly bizarre dividing lines: TERF versus trans. Free Speech versus safe spaces. Woke versus DGAF. Maskers versus anti-vaxxers. K-Pop/Swifties/Beliebers versus… music that doesn’t suck.
Each group has its own tastemakers, taletellers and gatekeepers.
Because our modern culture is hopelessly splintered, your marketing message cannot be unduly complex. Otherwise, it’ll never penetrate your target-audience’s cult-culture cocoon. The more your message must be explained, the more cost-prohibitive it is to disseminate. An 18-piece Contract with America, circa 1994, is too unwieldy for voters in 2024.
A successful economic message in 2024 must be direct. The shorter the better. Ideally, the tale you tell will quickly explain the problem — and then offer the perfect solution. And if the message is transferable to ALL Democrats, you can nationalize the election, so it’s not just about one person.
So what’s the problem? Demonomics. What’s the solution: Voting Republican.
(The fact that Demonomics sounds “demonic” shouldn’t be lost on you either. It makes it that much better for PR purposes.)
Be direct: call it Demonomics. Tell the tale.
And pin the tale on the donkey(s).
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