So the Democrats are going to nominate their presidential candidate in Milwaukee! Let's talk about this for a minute. It may not be the biggest news of the week, but it's a lot more fun than analyzing Donald Trump's budget plan.
Wisconsin, of course, is the state Hillary Clinton took for granted/failed to visit/lost in 2016. This is definitely a makeup bid. While nobody believes, deep down, that people base their vote on convention location, it can't hurt.
"Where you hold our convention is a very strong statement of your values and who and what we are fighting for," DNC chairman Tom Perez said in making the announcement.
Possible Milwaukee convention slogans:
A) "This Time We're Showing Up!"
B) "Milwaukee - Why Not?"
C) "More Hotel Rooms Than You've Heard"
Or maybe just "Let's Meet in the Middle." The Democrats have begun to realize that the Midwest is a problem. Clinton won the popular vote by about 2.9 million, but she lost the electoral vote due to tiny, tiny margins in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And the Democrats have not held their presidential convention in the Midwest for more than 100 years. Except for Chicago.
The civic leaders who spent the last year and a half trying to make the deal called themselves The Good Land Committee after a scene in "Wayne's World," where the guys meet Alice Cooper after a Milwaukee concert and ask him if he's there often. Cooper, stone-faced, then reels off a list of factoids about the city, including that its name is "Algonquin for the good land." The Milwaukee Public Library quietly issued a correction, explaining that it comes from "terms originating in the Ojibwa, Potawatomi and Menominee languages."
Really, sometimes it's hard to get this stuff right.
More possible Milwaukee convention slogans:
A) "Not About the Algonquins"
B) "Ninety-two Miles North of Chicago"
C) "Not Socialist at All - Ignore the Republicans!"
As soon as the site selection was announced, sniping started from the right. "No city in America has stronger ties to socialism than Milwaukee," said the director of the Wisconsin Republican Party, veering off into a mention of Bernie Sanders.
Milwaukee did once have a few mayors who called themselves socialists, although the last left office in 1960, and their goal was not so much taking over the means of production as tossing out crooked politicians. Which of course has no relation whatsoever to anything going on today.
Now, the city has strong union ties and a kind of working-class aura. The DNC passed up the glitzier options of Miami, which is sometimes known as "The Magic City," and Houston, which once called itself "The Golden Buckle of the Sunbelt."
"As a city we haven't prioritized a slogan because we can't wrap up all of the wonderfully random experiences that make up Milwaukee in just a few words," said Chris Jenkins of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce in a phone interview.
But about Milwaukee. The city likes to push its connection to the brewing industry - Perez celebrated the announcement with a toast of beer. Maybe that will inspire the presidential candidates to appropriate some of the old, spirits-related slogans for their campaigns.
For instance, which wine or beer tagline would you prefer for Joe Biden?
A) "Perfect for When Friends Drop In"
B) "Good Things Take Time"
C) "You Only Go Around Once"
OK, definitely not "You Only Go Around Once." But still, I think we're onto something here.
The New York Times