Perhaps you are old enough to remember the Syms clothing store’s commercial tagline from the 1970’s: “An educated consumer is our best customer.”  The slogan works on a couple of levels. For one thing, it flatters customers by implying that buying their clothes at Syms demonstrates–proves?– that they are well educated. The language of the slogan makes that illogical jump seem rational, no mean feat.  Rolex, Rolls Royce, and other high end products have used this technique successfully for years, but Syms was just another clothing store, nothing high end, just decent suits, jackets, and trousers..

And it worked

The back story is kind of interesting.  In 1958, after a dispute with his brother over the clothing store they had inherited from their father, Seymour Merns opened a rival men’s clothing store in New York City’s Financial District. The store, which was initially named Sy Merns, competed directly with his family’s original store a few blocks away. However, after his brother sued, Seymour Merns was forced to shorten the store’s name to SYMS. Merns later changed his name to Sy Syms to match the store.

The company, which slowly expanded during the 1960s and 1970s, aired its first television commercial in 1974, with the new slogan, “An educated consumer is our best customer, which it used for the next 37 years, until it closed in 2011.

I bring it up because I think Democrats might want to consider adopting a variation of Sy Syms’s slogan, something like “Educated voters are the backbone of America….and the Democratic party.”  

This slogan suggests that voting for Democrats is demonstrable proof that you are well educated, but that is NOT simple flattery because most educated voters already know that the current system is rigged against average citizens.  They know that in today’s America the richest 1% control more than 30% of the wealth, that the vast majority of students at our elite colleges come from wealth, and that opportunities to achieve the American dream are stifled by regressive tax policies, unfair housing, inadequate health coverage, and more. Those educated voters are likely to vote for progressive Democrats (and progressive Republicans where they exist).

But, first and foremost, there has to be more than a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties…..   

Democrats need policies that genuinely provide fair and decent chances. Democrats are in disarray, not because the party doesn’t have dozens of capable leaders but because it doesn’t seem to know what it stands for.  And rather than more ‘identity politics’ and an extended competition–a beauty contest–among candidates, we would be better served if Democrats moved away from identity politics and decided on their core principles.  

I’d opt for the public good, which means supporting public education, libraries, the infrastructure, a strong safety net, and fair taxation.  Individual rights, of course.  A strong defense, of course, but public and civic responsibilities need to be paramount.

Take “Education,” for starters. It doesn’t necessarily mean more years of schooling. We need to debate what it means to be ‘an educated citizen.’  And we need a system that recognizes and celebrates individual potential and interests, one that asks about each person ‘How Are You Smart?’ and not ‘How Smart Are You?’ And then provides a broad menu of opportunities for people to achieve their potential.

Democrats need to appeal to voters’ emotions and their rational self interest at the same time. JFK did that with “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”    Perhaps “Educated voters are the backbone of America….and the Democratic party” is a starting point.