Progressive Buttons Blog

Some of the most successful political campaign buttons are those that leave the reader to connect two pieces of information in order to come to the final conclusion. You see one of those buttons here.

The button could have read, Sarah Palin comes from the village of Wasilla, and she is an idiot. Every village needs a village idiot, and so why don’t we, in 2008, vote to prevent Sarah Palin from going to Washington D.C., so that she will be free to go back home to Wasilla and serve as village idiot there?

The actual motto reads better, I think: Wasilla needs its village idiot. Send Sarah Palin home.

You’re not an idiot. You can connect the dots.

Halloween is a great time to make a political statement because it’s a community holiday. People come out of their houses and meet with people in their neighborhoods whom they don’t see for the rest of the year. Also, Halloween is a time when people find it acceptable to dress up outlandishly, in ways that address their fears.

In 2008, Halloween comes just a few days before Election Day, and so the holiday offers a tremendous opportunity for some subtle campaigning. The simple act of wearing a political button while going out trick or treating with the kids, or while receiving trick or treaters, gets the message out…

…in this case, the message that Sarah Palin is scary. The first campaign button notes the apparent mental instability of Palin, who lashes out in weird ways against large numbers of people she perceives as her enemies. Sarah Palin is too batty to be VP.

The next button makes good use of alliteration as well, and casts a mood similar to that of The Blair Witch Project: Beware the curse of the Wasilla Witch.

Republicans seem to have decided that sex appeal is a good reason to elect someone to become Vice President. That’s why they’ve come up with a political campaign button for Sarah Palin that calls her the hottest VP from the coolest state, or for those who aren’t inclined to count their chicks before they hatch, the hottest governor from the coolest state. The main thing, these political buttons declare, is that Sarah Palin is hot!

Hot?

You know, as a guy I can say quite honestly that Pro-Life women are never hot. The whole having sex only for procreation and for the glory of God, and abstinence until marriage thing and no contraceptives is also a definite turnoff.

Then, when a woman starts talking about her personal pet projects, like, say, a natural gas pipeline, as the will of God, it makes a man want to slowly back away and then go take a shower. It’s creepy, not hot.

So, Sarah Palin, no, she is not the hottest vice presidential candidate from the coolest state. She is the craziest vice presidential candidate from the coolest state.

There has been a good deal of attention given to the birders for Obama bumper sticker in the birding community. It’s spread by word of mouth from center to center. I’ve seen some myself at cars parked at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, for example.

However, a lot of avid birders are not avid drivers. They understand the havoc that fossil fuels have brought to the ecosystems within which America’s birds must survive. Also, birders know from experience that the best observation is not done from the driver’s seat. Kayaking, biking, walking are more to a birder’s rhythm.

These birders want to support Barack Obama too, because Barack Obama and Joe Biden make the best team for the White House on environmental issues. Any goodwill that John McCain had built up in the environmental community was destroyed when he picked Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Sarah Palin denies that humans have anything to do with global warming. She has sued to kick the polar bear off the list of species entitled to Endangered Species Act protection. Palin has promoted the aerial hunting of wolves. She’s in the pocket of Big Oil. In short, Sarah Palin is most certainly not for the birds, and not for birders.

For birders, then, there is also a political button that can be seen when walking: Another Birders for Obama design.

Here are two new sturdy metal pinback buttons against the pick today of Sarah Palin for Vice President by Arizona Republican John McCain. Look for more of these in the days to come from the Anti-McCain button shop over at Irregular Times.

Red Slash Through McCain-Palin 08 button

No Way, No How, No to McCain-Palin button

Unless you’ve been shoveling out the latrine all day long, you’re probably aware that Barack Obama has chosen Delaware Senator Joseph Biden to be his vice presidential pick. The Obama-Biden Democratic ticket will be officially nominated during the Democratic National Convention in Denver next week.

If you’re looking for an Obama-Biden Button to affix to your lapel, look no further. Here is our first set of ten Obama-Biden buttons for your pinback pleasure.

Obama-Biden ‘08 Two Flags Design button Obama-Biden ‘08, Together For America (Patriotic Swoosh Design) button Obama-Biden 2008 Red With Blue Flag button Obama-Biden 2008 Waving American Flag Design button Obama-Biden Text Diamond: Black and White button

Obama-Biden Text Diamond: Black Text on White button Obama-Biden Text Diamond: White Text on Black button Vote Obama-Biden ‘08 (blue background with a star) button Vote Obama-Biden for America’s Future button Obama-Biden Yin Yang pin

If you like what you see, look for more in the coming days from our Obama-Biden button shop.

The Democratic Party has hoisted a great spoof website called Exxon-McCain 2008 that uses the guise of an Exxon/McCain presidential ticket as a way of talking about John McCain’s connections not just to that one oil company but to the oil industry in general. Did you know, for instance, that right after John McCain executed his flip-flop from opposing offshore oil drilling to supporting it, McCain received huge coordinated contributions from the Hess oil corporation, including from multiple employees of Hess, all on the same day? Well, it’s true, and the Exxon-McCain 2008 page exposes this and other facts with sourcing and with glee.

The Democratic Party is trying to get this meme to spread around the ‘net and the physical world, making their logo publicly available for printing on signs and such. But they don’t have a ready-made Exxon-McCain 2008 button people can use to stick on their jackets and go, go, go.

Here’s a solution: two Exxon-McCain 2008 sturdy metal pinback buttons, designed and produced by us independently but in support of the Democratic Party effort. Click on the image you prefer to get yours at the bargain price of just $2.75 apiece including shipping. We’ll ship them out right away via the U.S. Postal Service.

There’s a lot of babble going on amongst Washington D.C. political insiders about who will be Barack Obama’s vice presidential pick. There’s a problem with all of their talk, however - it’s from D.C. political insiders and the corporate pundits who repeat their whisperings. These people aren’t in touch with the electorate so much as they are in touch with the power elites - the people who represent the interests of the corporations and wealthy individuals.

For the American people, who would be the best vice presidential running mate for Barack Obama? I’ve got two picks:

First, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius. She’s got executive experience, and a strong progressive record, standing up against wacko Creationists and big oil corporations alike. Sebelius has a strong presence that could attract a new kind of voter to pay attention to the presidential election.

Second, there’s Russ Feingold, United States Senator from Wisconsin. Yes, he’s a member of the Senate, just like Obama, but he’s also got one of the most progressive voting records in the Senate, and so far, Obama has spent his summer making his progressive base so angry that they’ve begin to rise up in rebellion against his candidacy. Obama needs to do some Democratic Party damage control, and he needs to do it fast. Russ Feingold could be just the running mate to make that happen.

The war between Georgia and Russia has brought out the worst in people - and not just in Eurasia. Here in the United States, the opportunity to involve the American government in a new war has got some politicians fairly salivating.

John McCain, for example, has started calling up foreign leaders and declaring that he speaks for “all Americans”, and stating that the USA is completely on the side of the Georgians against the Russians. The Georgians are seeking to defend their nationalist pride, and the Russians are seeking to prove their own greater nationhood again too.

In these times, the boldest move of all is to reject the nationalist idea that there are some countries that are inherently more virtuous than others, and that people ought to sacrifice themselves to their nations, so that their nations can prosper, even if the citizens themselves are killed by the thousands.

This political button serves as a badge to show that you are a citizen of the Earth, and refuse to be restricted to an identity linked to just one small piece of turf. It’s time for a positive global identity, based on peace, not grabbing everything that you can for the Homeland.

All American retail businesses are suffering in this economic recession, but the political button business is a particularly hard one right now. 2004 saw sales of campaign buttons reach unprecedented levels, but since then, the American public has shown a profound disinterest in political buttons.

I’m not just guessing that’s the case. Here’s a chart that proves it:

This graph shows online interest in political button as measured through the databases of Google. As you can see, interest in political buttons was high throughout most of 2004, but crashed after the 2004 election and has never recovered - not even with the 2008 presidential campaign.

What’s to blame? It isn’t just the bad economy. A political button doesn’t cost very much, in the scheme of things, although the decision by CafePress to increase the price of their basic buttons to about five dollars hasn’t helped matters.

The problem is apathy. People got involved in the 2004 presidential election because they saw that George W. Bush was a profound threat to America… but then they lost, and lost interest. The lesson they took away from the 2004 presidential election is that it doesn’t matter what they do.

So, even people who approve of Barack Obama in 2008 are less involved in showing their support. Americans have become political observers, not political activists. They’re happy to just watch the presidential campaigns on TV. They feel no need to get involved, and no need to wear a political button.