Election Day! Panic in the streets!

AH, HOPE FOR TOMORROW...
 
"Your hopes have become my hopes and your dreams have become my dreams."
 
"We can give every parent the right to send their kids to the school of their choice, including millions of low-income African-American and Hispanic children who have been failed for generations..."
 
"It is time to cut our ties with the failed politicians of the past, and embrace a bright, new future for all of our people."
 
"I pledge to fight for the right of every child in America to grow up in safety and peace..."
 
"Real change also means draining the swamp of corruption in Washington."
 
 
OR, MAYBE SOME OTHER HOPE FOR THE FUTURE?
 
"We can build an economy that works for everyone..."
 
"We can come together to build a stronger, fairer America."
 
"We will put forward the biggest investment in new jobs since World War II. We'll invest in infrastructure and manufacturing to grow our economy for years to come."
 
"America, if you can dream it, you should be able to build it."
 
"We will introduce comprehensive immigration reform legislation."
 
"We need to get secret, unaccountable money out of our politics."
 
WHICH CANDIDATE PROFFERED WHICH BLATHER?
 
Does it even matter?
 
If you're interested, those are direct quotes from the presidential candidates' respective op-ed pieces in  USA Today, published Monday. (Yesterday).
 
Both screeds are filled with grand promises that ring as hollow as an empty oil drum.
 
And the major difference between the two candidates' brands?
 
It seems that one is widely regarded as repulsive.
 
The other is widely regarded as, "At least we're not him."
 
The political consultants get paid money for this?
 
EVERYONE'S FED UP
 
Half of everyone is planning to leave the country.
 
An ad agency in Sweden is preparing to hire copywriters and art directors wishing to flee a Trump presidency.
 
Interestingly, as ugly as things have been for the last 11 months, it isn't the race of 1876.
 
Smithsonian calls that contest, "The ugliest, most contentious and most controversial presidential election in U.S. history."
 
Uglier than 2016?
 
Smithsonian continues, "Throughout the campaign, [his] opposition had called him everything from a briber to a thief to a drunken syphilitic."
 
DRUNKEN SYPHILITIC?
 
Well, nobody in the 2016 campaign has trotted out that old chestnut.
 
"Suspicion of voter fraud in Republican-controlled states was rampant."
 
Hmm. Well, that's sounding more familiar.
 
In what ultimately became a truly ugly contest, the candidate whose presidency would have been a "national disaster" finally conceded.
 
Rutherford B. Hayes became president and oversaw Reconstruction, which begins a whole other series of historical question marks.
 
But back to today.
 
It's Election Day 2016.
 
"THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE HUNGRY FOR NEW IDEAS AND NEW VOICES"
 
You got that right.
 
That hunger is how a nobody came out of nowhere with his "I'm better than them" brand. He has taken some corners of the nation by storm--with barely a million dollars in donations. (Hillary has raised 687 times that figure. Trump has raised 250 times that, plus ostensibly throwing in his own pocket change from between the sofa cushions.)
 
This unknown candidate spent 10 years of his career "spearheading counterterrorism and intelligence operations in some of the most dangerous places on earth."
 
He's now working for the Investment Banking Division at Goldman Sachs in San Francisco, and has been a senior advisor to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
 
His vice-presidential candidate is a "Tech Titan" and founded "a non-profit working to expand and diversify the conversation on feminism and women's equality."
 
She has worked at Twitter "heading up strategic partnerships in Washington, D.C." Her work "focuses on technology's impact on politics and democracy, and she has built tools and programs to empower individuals to organize and shape policy."
 
WOW! WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE?!
 
It'll never happen, of course.
 
They'll never be elected.
 
And to many punditing away in the punditsphere, the Evan McMullin & Mindy Finn ticket--despite the "new ideas/new voices" brand--really has nothing new to offer anyone in any way that matters.
 
The most you can say for them is that, by splitting conservative votes in the state, they'll possibly throw Utah to Hillary.
 
Whatever.
 
We are not here to prognosticate or to even suggest who's worth voting for.
 
Both the Trump brand and the Hillary brand are problematic at best.
 
And their brands, in turn, are thrusting the American brand into a jaundiced light for our friends abroad.
 
WHAT'S A VOTER TO DO? 
 
Once it's all over tonight, get up off the floor.
 
Dust yourself off.
 
Wipe away whatever that is on your chin.
 
Put the empty liquor bottles into the recycling bin.
 
And continue pushing your own brand forward.
 
Rugged individualism has been the persevering brand of the American Dream.
 
And with any luck, the rugged individuals can overcome whatever absurdities await in D.C.
 
IT'S HAPPENED BEFORE
 
We'll do it again.
 
In the meantime, we can look to Mark Twain for his reminder that, "All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity."
 
Here's to four years of prosperity through brand!
 
<fingers crossed>
 
Oh, and by the way: the USA Today quotes from the beginning of the screed?
 
The first group of quotes is from Trump.
 
The second group of quotes is from Hillary.
 
If you care. 
As always,
 
Blaine Parker
Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in
Park City

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