Politics as Positioning

On July 22, 1864, outside Atlanta, the battlefield refused to behave like a tidy diagram. Units shifted, lines bent, attacks came from angles nobody had expected, and some soldiers ended up reworking captured earthworks so the trenches faced the other way. Civil War historians use a blunt verb for this: troops “reversed” the trenches, meaning they literally changed the direction the works faced. You can imagine the disorientation: the same dirt wall that protected you in the morning might need to protect you from the opposite direction by afternoon. (Emerging Civil War)

That’s a vivid way to think about American political identity over the last century: not just “who won,” but which side owns which meanings. “Elite,” “working people,” “patriot,” “outsider,” “responsible,” “dangerous.” These labels are not welded to parties forever. They get fought over, seized, and sometimes, like those trenches outside Atlanta, flipped around.

To understand that flipping, it helps to borrow a tool from marketing: positioning.

What “positioning” means (in marketing terms)

Positioning is the act of designing and communicating an offering so it occupies a distinctive place in the mind of the target audience. In other words, the product (or party, or candidate) does not merely exist in the world. It exists as a shortcut in people’s heads, a stable association that helps them choose quickly in a noisy environment. (The Open University)

It’s easy to misunderstand positioning as spin. Sometimes it is. But at its best, positioning is clarity: “When people are deciding quickly, what simple idea do we want to be the default?”

Two classic examples show how brutally powerful this can be.

Example 1: Avis and the advantage of being #2

In the early 1960s, Avis was stuck behind Hertz. The usual corporate instinct in that situation is to pretend you’re basically #1, too, just with fewer locations, fewer cars, and fewer customers. In 1962, Avis did something smarter: it made second place the whole point. The “We Try Harder” campaign leaned into the idea that if you’re not the biggest, you have to be hungrier, more attentive, more obsessive about service. It was a positioning move that turned a weakness into a promise: “We may be #2, but that means you’ll get the effort.” (Mumbrella)

Notice what happened. Avis did not just differentiate from Hertz. It differentiated from every bland rental company claim (“quality,” “value,” “service,” the corporate oatmeal of words). It created a memorable slot in the mind: the striver brand.

Example 2: Tylenol and repositioning the competition

Tylenol didn’t merely say “We’re good.” It reframed what the public believed about the category leader, aspirin. In a famous set of ads discussed by marketing writers, Tylenol highlighted that aspirin can irritate the stomach lining and can cause “small amounts of hidden gastrointestinal bleeding.” Suddenly, aspirin wasn’t just the familiar go-to. It had a shadow. Tylenol repositioned itself as the safer, gentler alternative, especially for people with certain conditions or sensitivities. (Forbes)

This is the sharp edge of positioning: you do not always have to prove you are perfect. Sometimes you only have to change the comparison.

Now, bring those two moves into politics.

1930–1970: the Democrats’ “everyman” position

From the New Deal era into the mid-20th century, the Democratic Party built (and benefited from) a broad coalition strongly associated with labor unions, wage earners, and government programs meant to stabilize everyday life during economic upheaval. Historians often describe this as the New Deal coalition: labor, many urban and working-class voters, various minority groups, and other blocs that helped Democrats dominate national politics for decades. (Wikipedia)

In the popular imagination, this era left a simple mental picture:

• Democrats: the party of the regular person, unions, bread-and-butter programs.

• Republicans: the party of business and wealth, the “fat cat” gestalt (fair or not).

As positioning, it was incredibly effective because it was emotionally legible. People didn’t need a white paper to know where each party “stood.” They had a story.

The Republican repositioning: “Democrats are the elite”

Then the trenches began to turn.

Over time, Republicans and conservative media developed a competing frame: Democrats as elitists, cultural scolds, and insiders who control institutions (universities, media, bureaucracy), while presenting themselves as defenders of ordinary people against that “liberal elite.” You can see this rhetoric explicitly in modern reporting and political analysis of anti-elite messaging and conservative media ecosystems. (Reuters)

This repositioning gained extra traction as partisan coalitions shifted along education lines, with Democrats increasingly strong among college-educated voters and Republicans stronger among many non-college-educated voters, a pattern widely discussed as the “diploma divide.” (Niskanen Center)

So the Republicans didn’t just argue policy. They changed the comparison frame. They told a new story:

• Democrats: the new elite, credentialed, smug, coastal, out of touch.

• Republicans: the outsiders, the voice of “real America.”

Whether one agrees with this story is separate from recognizing it as an effective positioning play. It is an Avis move (turn perceived disadvantage into identity) combined with a Tylenol move (reframe the competitor as subtly dangerous, untrustworthy, or contemptuous).

Why the Democratic “underdog” brand got easier to attack

The Democrats, as you put it, kept championing the underdog, but they expanded the tent to include many varieties of the oppressed and marginalized. Morally, that can be principled. Strategically, it created a communications problem: the party’s “who we fight for” story became more complex, more segmented, and easier to caricature.

Complexity is kryptonite to positioning. Voters do not live inside policy spreadsheets. They live inside identity shorthand. If your coalition story becomes “we represent a long list,” your opponents can cherry-pick that list, distort it, and use cultural fear as a lever.

That’s where religious and cultural ignorance, fear, and bigotry can function like accelerants. Not because every working-class voter is bigoted, but because fear-based narratives are simple, sticky, and portable. They fit on a bumper sticker and survive the trip from one Facebook post to a diner conversation with no loss of voltage.

Meanwhile, the underlying economic reality you’re pointing to remains: a party can win cultural battles while not actually advancing the material interests of many of the people waving its flags. Positioning can cause voters to vote against their own economic priorities because they are voting for a story about “who respects me” and “who is like me.”

Power at any cost, and the “brand drift” problem

Here’s the deeper danger for Republicans (in your framing): success through a personality cult can be a kind of brand poison.

Any institution that ties itself tightly to a single charismatic figure, especially one who thrives on insult, spectacle, and grievance, risks trading long-term credibility for short-term mobilization. A demagogue’s superpower is attention. The price is trust.

In branding terms, this is “brand drift” turning into “brand capture.” The party becomes less “a set of principles” and more “a vehicle.” The leader becomes the logo. The ideology becomes optional. The point is not conservatism, or limited government, or prudence. The point becomes victory, dominance, revenge, and loyal applause.

That approach can absolutely generate wins. It can also corrode the party’s relationship with constitutional norms, balances of power, institutional legitimacy, and international goodwill, because those things are slow and boring and do not trend. Once public trust is shattered, it’s hard to reassemble, even if you later want it back. The short-term gain can be real. The long-term loss can be structural.

The opportunity for Democrats: reposition as the pragmatists

If Republicans have been repositioned (by their own choices) as erratic, personality-driven, and institution-breaking, Democrats have an opening to claim a position that many Americans crave even when they don’t say it out loud:

predictable competence.

Not “elite.” Not “revolution.” Not “lecture.” Pragmatic stewardship.

That positioning could include several specific moves.

1) Welfare as investment, not charity

One of the easiest Republican attacks is to frame welfare policies as giveaways to “them.” Democrats can reframe: these are investments in future productivity and stability. Healthy kids become employable adults. Stable housing reduces downstream costs in emergency medicine, policing, and incarceration. Education and training expand the tax base. This is not soft-heartedness versus hard-headedness. It’s a time horizon.

Make the metaphor financial: “Pay a little now, or pay a lot later.” Voters understand maintenance.

2) Fiscal responsibility as reliability, not austerity cosplay

Democrats have often ceded the “responsible adult” vibe, even when their policy proposals are detailed and their budgets more reality-based than the opposition’s slogans. The repositioning task is to make fiscal seriousness feel like a character trait:

• We budget.

• We measure outcomes.

• We cut what fails.

• We scale what works.

That message turns “government programs” from an abstract ideology into a practical toolbox.

3) Goodwill at home and abroad as strength

If the Republican brand is increasingly “unreliable ally, unreliable narrator,” Democrats can position themselves as the party of durable alliances and steady leadership. That is not about being liked. It’s about reducing chaos costs. Markets hate instability. Families hate instability. Soldiers hate instability. Diplomacy, trade, and security all become more expensive when partners cannot predict what you’ll do next.

4) A simpler coalition story

This is the hardest and most important repositioning move: tell a coalition story that is inclusive without becoming a catalog.

A positioning-friendly version might sound like:
“We’re the party that builds a country you can live in: safe, solvent, and fair.”

Then, under that umbrella, you can still advocate for specific groups, but the headline is coherent.

Back to Atlanta: the trench you reverse becomes your new front

The Battle of Atlanta image is useful because it captures something psychological. When a line is threatened, you either hold it, retreat, or reverse it. Politics is like that. Parties wake up one day and realize the categories have rotated. The label “elite” is no longer sitting where it used to sit. The “outsider” badge has been grabbed by a new actor. The old map does not match the terrain.

If Democrats want to win in the next era, they cannot just insist the old positioning is still true. They have to build a new position that people can hold in their heads without strain: competent, pragmatic, pro-family (in the broad sense), pro-stability, and future-investment oriented.

And if Republicans keep chasing power through personality worship and scorched-earth tactics, they may discover the cruel math of positioning: you can win the day and still lose the brand.

Because once you’ve trained the public to distrust everything, eventually they will distrust you, too.