Making the click-through worthwhile: A new report about big companies and the perception of their political stances reveals unintended truths about short-lived political controversies, some other Democrat who the rest of the country has barely noticed announces he’s running for president, and Democrats with thin résumés enjoy the fantasy stage of campaigning for president.
The Perception of a Company’s Politics Rarely Matches the Company’s Actions
A few oddities arose in a newly released survey of consumers and their views of companies and politics. The survey asked, “How appropriate is it for a corporation to take a position on each of the following issues?” As one might expect, more than 90 percent of respondents approved of companies taking a position on less controversial topics like “hiring and training U.S. military veterans” and “fair labor standards for workers.”
Coming in dead last? “Against President Trump,” at 47 percent — behind “legalization of marijuana” at 49 percent, “transgender issues” at 58 percent.
The survey asked, “If (company) were a person, do you think it would be a Democrat, a Republican, or an independent?” Unsurprisingly, Nike was the company scored most likely to be a Democrat. But the perception of other companies is surprising, considering what those companies have actually done.
Dick’s Sporting Goods scored just barely on the Republican side, which is surprising considering the company’s post-Parkland stance on gun gales (and resulting drop in earnings). Similarly, Delta Airlines scored as a Republican company, which is a little bit surprising considering the short-lived brouhaha over their quickly forgotten dropped discount for NRA members (that apparently only 13 people used anyway).
General Motors scored on the Republican side, which suggests the entirety of the bailout and “Government Motors” debate has been forgotten by the public. And the company that ranked the second most “Republican” in responses was the department store Nordstrom . . . which stands out as a company specifically denounced by President Trump for dropping his daughter’s line of luxury apparel. (Ivanka Trump closed up her fashion brand last year.)
The company perceived to be most “Republican” is the bank- and financial- services company J.P. Morgan Chase. Most years, the company’s employees donate slightly more to Democrats than Republicans. In 2012, Obama called them “one of the best-managed banks there is.” Asked about his political views earlier this year, CEO Jamie Dimon said, “My heart is Democratic, but my brain is kind of Republican.”
Facebook is perceived as the second-most Democratic company, despite a considerable number of online activist Democrats believing that the company let Russia manipulate the election through various ads. Starbucks is fourth-most Democratic, which isn’t enormously surprising, but the company has certainly attracted the ire of progressive activists over the years.
Target is considered a Democratic company, Walmart is considered a Republican company; this probably has to do with the short-lived “transgender bathroom” policy announcement of 2016. Beyond that, Target’s policies aren’t all that distinguishable from Walmart’s. There is one dollar’s worth of difference in the two companies’ minimum wages. Both companies stand accused of using contractors who hire undocumented immigrants and pay them a pittance, and Target settled a class-action discrimination lawsuit last year.
The authors of the analysis of the survey declare, “There is reward for companies that take action on political and social issues, and a penalty for inaction.” But I think the evidence points to the opposite conclusion. I think the clearer lesson is that most consumers quickly forget about most of these controversies that kick up like a summer thunderstorm – they appear quickly, suddenly get very intense, and then disappear quickly, and almost everyone forgets about them. Despite all the loud talk of boycotts against Starbucks, Nike, and Facebook, most people just want to drink coffee, wear sneakers, and see which high-school classmates got fat.
The perception of a company’s politics often has only a nominal connection to what the company actually does. State Street, the financial-services company that paid for and positioned “Fearless Girl,” the statue of a young woman challenging Wall Street’s “Charging Bull,” agreed to pay $5 million in a settlement over allegations that it paid female employees less than their male counterparts.
A lot of people, led by a far-too-credulous media that is eager for clicks and controversy, are gullible when it comes to corporate image-shaping and public relations. Nike figured out how to get Americans to stop worrying about sweatshops. Patagonia realized its supply chain had been profiting off human trafficking, forced labor, and exploitation.
Outspoken progressive activism is the quickest and easiest way to buy your way back into the good graces of certain corners of society. Witness Michael Cohen this week, as well as James Comey’s reinventing himself from the favorite election scapegoat of many Democrats to a leader of #TheResistance.
Perhaps the most egregious attempt at this, and one of the rare cases where it didn’t work, was Harvey Weinstein’s first statement after the revelations of gross sexual abuse, a display of cynicism so blinding it might as well have been written on white phosphorus: “I am going to need a place to channel that anger, so I’ve decided that I’m going to give the NRA my full attention. I hope Wayne LaPierre will enjoy his retirement party. I’m going to do it at the same place I had my Bar Mitzvah. I’m making a movie about our President, perhaps we can make it a joint retirement party.” Forget what I’ve done, remember the real enemy, liberal friends!
Christian Toto points out all the ways that Spike Lee, Ellen Page, and Alec Baldwin keep getting “second chances” and minimal scolding after bad behavior. When a modern political movement keeps offering its members a behavioral “get out of jail free card”. . . why wouldn’t they use it?
Whatshisname Is Running for President. No, Not That One. The Other One.
Jay Inslee is running for president.
He’s the governor of Washington.
Oh, to clarify, he’s running for president of the United States of America.
No one has ever won a major statewide race, let alone a presidential nomination, with a single-issue, climate-focused candidacy. But Jay Inslee is about to try. The Washington state governor launched a White House bid Friday that stands to have a significant effect on the electoral politics surrounding climate change.
So basically, he’s running to be EPA Administrator in the next Democratic administration.
A Pew Research Center survey, conducted Jan. 9-14 among 1,505 adults, gave respondents a list of 18 issues and asked which ones should be a top priority for President Trump and Congress this year. Climate change was second from the bottom, with 44 percent. “The environment” came in eighth place, with 56 percent.
Fantasies on the Campaign Trail Are More Fun than Governing in Reality
The Washington Post observes that a lot of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates are emulating elements of Trump’s approach from 2016: make sweeping, previously unthinkable promises, ignore the price tag, be fuzzy on the details, disregard the necessity of a cooperative Congress, hand-wave-away questions about whether the idea is even Constitutional, and dismiss the opposition as timid and hapless. (Changing the source of 90 percent of America’s current energy supply within ten years makes getting Mexico to pay for a border wall look easy.)
This may not work as well for the average Democratic senator as it does for a celebrity with no governing experience and no previous runs for office. In most of these cases, these Democratic lawmakers have been in elected office for decades, and they’ve never even introduced legislation to do anything like it, much less enacted proposals on this scale. A lot of politicians say things like, “I led the fight to [do X],” when they really mean, “when X was being passed, I gave a speech in support of it.”
Trump at least had a (heavily stage-managed and often wildly exaggerated) image as “the guy who could get things done” — his name on big buildings, the personal fortune that was somewhere between substantial and epic, the endless glossy media profiles, and of course, holding everyone accountable on The Apprentice.
Liz Mair observed the stunning fact that before Trump announced that he was running for president in 2015, he had 99.2 percent name recognition among polled GOP-leaning voters. If you want to be the next Donald Trump, step one is to spend several decades as a not-that-overtly-political pop-culture celebrity associated with ostentatious wealth.
ADDENDA: Thanks to everyone who attended yesterday’s CPAC panel on podcasting. I understand the Leadership Institute may organize a similar one sometime this summer.
At some point, the second half of my (obsessive, probably manic-depressive) talk about the Jets offseason will appear on TurnOnTheJets.com — thanks once again to Scott for having me.