The Right Resistance: What the GOP can learn from Bud Light – Don’t tick off your customers
How might a beer company convince experienced drinkers to buy bad beer? Or, how might a political candidate recruit more voters?
Regular politics watchers know that much of the challenge in building a winning electoral coalition involves lumping voters together by group and hoping against hope that past statistics and voting patterns hold in order to devise the greatest formula for success.
One example everyone seems to be talking about these days is the hypothetical electability of former president Donald Trump. The prevailing anti-Trump wisdom has it that Joe Biden’s predecessor couldn’t possibly hope to expand on his 2020 final vote tallies, and therefore, has zero chance to beat the Democrat nominee (most likely Joe Biden) in 2024. Due to Trump’s well-established harsh reputation and intractable personality, he’d be unable to attract new recruits to the cause. They suggest the GOP tent needs to get bigger to win.
The electoral college aside, is it important for Donald Trump, if indeed he ends up the Republican nominee, to “win” the national popular vote next year? And, more succinctly, is it already a foregone conclusion that Americans who voted for Joe Biden three years ago will be so turned off by Trump – again – that they’ll refuse to even consider a switchover?
These mysteries cannot be solved in mid-April, 2023. The most glaring reason for not calling the outcome early is because we’re yet to find out if senile president Joe Biden will even run again. We also don’t know how Trump’s various legal witch hunts will be resolved and, at this point, we can’t nail down who will enter the Republican primary race against the 45th president. I’ve argued it often – the issues we’re talking about at the present moment can, and very likely will, be different in the fall of 2024. This hopeless lack of certainty is stimulating to some and maddening to others, but stating the plain facts – like the election is still over a year and a half away – isn’t making the dilemma easier to accept for the doubters.
Culture is just as hard to forecast. With the recent leftist drive to shove transgenderism down the throats (pardon the gross imagery) of normal people, it’s entirely foreseeable how “traditional” society is tolerating the absurd concept of men calling themselves women and vice versa. Here’s thinking decent citizens don’t like it, except for the “anything goes” destructors of American beliefs and traditions.
How would you “expand the tent” of “woke” culture believers?
Then there’s the not-so-good folks who control the marketing of Bud Light, who must’ve either not received the memo on assessing American values or ignored its findings in favor of their “woke” predilections on why some humans drink bad tasting beer. What were they thinking? In a piece titled “Dylan Mulvaney, fake female, is an offense to real women”, the oft insightful and non-politically correct Cheryl Chumley wrote at The Washington Times:
“The lies of the transgender movement are sweeping across America, causing chaos in girls dressing rooms, chaos in college sports, chaos to women’s rights. How can women seriously demand equal rights in a society that doesn’t know how to define women? And therein lies the reason for this continuation of transgender madness.
“It’s the chaos that’s being embraced by the left. Democrats, socialists, Marxists, collectivists know that with enough chaos comes collapse. And they know that once society collapses — once the family unit is destroyed — once the very foundational truths of humanity are decimated — then the doors open for Democrats, socialist, Marxist, collectivist takeover and seizure of power.
“Don’t for a minute think that leftists care about transgenders and transgender rights. The entire LGBTQ community already has equal rights. Leftists are simply exploiting the mental illness of those who populate the LGBTQ world for political purposes. If it destroys womanhood in the process, so be it.”
Well put. There’s nothing about the current leftist political fixation on gender and sexuality that is intended to further females as women or males as men. The kooks just want otherwise “regular” men and women to doubt their own perceptions and feelings as though everything we’ve ever heard or felt since birth has somehow been a sick premise for a modern episode of “The Twilight Zone”.
It’s more than a little ironic how the LGBTQIA+++ supporters of weirdo transgenderism use the slogan “Trans people are just being their authentic selves”, because nothing could be further from the truth. As Chumley pointed out in her piece, there’s nothing genuine about these gender pretenders. In fact, in the case of Dylan Mulvaney, he dons clothing designed and fit for female bodies to lend the impression that he’s got a woman’s sex organs and a chromosomal makeup that includes two X chromosomes.
Seriously, is there a single fashion designer who purposely scribes and scribbles clothes designs for people who identify as transgender? I may be ignorant – and happily so – but I don’t recall any clothing stores on a recent trip to the mall that marketed themselves as “the official wardrobe provider of the transgender man”, or, “putting together skinny ladies’ panties with an anatomical accommodation for transitioning males”.
Likewise, when singer Shania Twain crooned “Man, I feel like a woman”, I doubt she had the most modern conception of the viewpoint in mind.
I also don’t remember from junior high school science class Mr. Grossman (my teacher for three years in the early 80’s) ever mentioning that boys and girls could become one or the other just by putting on a skirt or sporting a plaid shirt like a lumberjack’s. Back then, we had Elton John and Freddie Mercury wearing the extreme gender-bending costumes to shock folks into listening to them (which is a shame because their music was so extraordinary on its own), but no one really considered the entertainers to be the opposite sex like in today’s backwards sensibilities.
Even when “gay” no longer was presumed to mean “happy”, there wasn’t any confusion.
Again, I can’t say for certain, but I’m guessing that my age group and those slightly younger are the target customer for a mass produced and marketed beer like Bud Light. We’ve been around long enough to have tried just about every beer there is, and we’ve also been brought up with the Budweiser brand to expect a beverage that isn’t heavy on the gut and tastes so familiar that we don’t seem to mind that it… really doesn’t taste that great.
Bud Light itself has thrived on marketing campaigns directed mostly at male beer drinkers where price is a factor – and quantity counts. Who else, in their right mind, would go to a bar and order a single serving of Bud Light? No, you go to a drinkin’ joint and order the stuff by the pitcher to either enhance the ball game or drown your sorrows depending on the fortunes of your team on the field or court.
It's for men who like being men and women who like drinking beer around men who like acting like men. Remember the famous TV ad where the fictional “Johnny” is fishing with his father and brother and concocts a harmless scheme to grab more of their beer for himself? “I love ya, man!” Who fails to see the irony now? The spot came out in 1995. Or how about the 1988 commercial where a prehistoric man brings his discovery of fire back to his tribe only to be told to “Now go get pizza”? Will the current brains at Bud Light somehow try to insert trans-activist and cultural destroyer Dylan Mulvaney into an ad series where he’s shopping at Victoria Secret with his “girlfriends” and then try to steal their stylish Bud Light bottles with his face on it while trying on the latest bras and unmentionables? Would this type of stunt “expand the tent” of thirsty beer drinkers who crave to purchase Bud Light or just turn everyone else off?
Similar to the hubbub that enveloped shaver-maker Gillette a couple years ago over their incredibly poorly-considered “toxic masculinity” marketing campaign, bringing in a transgender man (who thinks he’s a woman and dresses accordingly) was, from the start, destined to fail. Increasing market share with a brand like Bud Light must be tough enough as it is, but one can’t foster more Bud Light fans by alienating most of the ones who already buy the product.
Along the same lines, Donald Trump won’t attract more Trump supporters by ticking off some of the backers he already has. And any hope he would have of “expanding his tent” to welcome disgruntled Biden voters would be dashed by reopening old wounds. Donald Trump is no Dylan Mulvaney, and politics ain’t like peddling cheap beer, but the concepts aren’t that different.
Bud Light wants more customers. Donald Trump wants more contributors, volunteers, supporters, merchandise buyers – and voters.
Every politician, manufacturer or retailer won’t last long if they don’t constantly evolve to appeal to new folks, but they can’t change so much that one offends the original target audience. Bud Light made a major error by selling out its main customer base to try and capture the “woke freak” market. Donald Trump has a simpler task – to keep promoting MAGA and stay out of intra-party controversy.
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