Political pros hate them. Some activists love them. And within campaigns, they are always a fraught topic.
A New York Times account of efforts among local Democratic activists to re-energize the party in rural Pennsylvania touches on themes that are frequently part of the great sign kerfuffle.
Mr. Eggleston is leading an effort to get tens of thousands of Biden-Harris placards planted around the state. Every Democrat I talked to for this story emphasized the importance of this low-tech tactic. In rural areas, just about everyone has a yard. For badly outnumbered Democrats, the signs tell them they are not alone.
Mr. Obama’s campaigns were digitally savvy and groundbreaking in their mastery of the internet. That was the model for the Clinton team, and Mr. Eggleston said he struggled in 2016 to convince them of the importance of signs. “You run into these militant campaign professionals,” he said. “They tell you, ‘Signs don’t vote.’ We didn’t have much of anything last time around.
By contrast, he said, the Trump campaign “dumped a mountain of merchandise on these people. It was a sea of Trump signs, Trump hats, Trump buttons. People didn’t understand the impact of that. They made him into a brand.
Mr. Eggleston has been delivering many of the signs himself to bulk drop-off locations, driving thousands of miles in a rental truck across Pennsylvania’s interstates. “I’m doing it partly for self-therapy,” he said. “There’s a sense of shared purpose that was missing in 2016. I feel good about Pennsylvania because of it. It is the exact opposite of 2016. People thought Clinton was a shoo-in and there was never enough energy.”
It's true: "signs don't vote." And it is also true that, in some locales, signs and bumperstickers and pins and t-shirts serve to let supporters know they are not alone. And whether those supporters are feeling isolated or feeling part of a triumphant surge of energy as they may in a winning campaign, that experience of the election as collective action is a bedrock of democratic citizenship.
So what are the issues with signs? The professional answer is that their impact can't be quantified. And it can't. But when a campaign is a going concern, there are many elements that can't be quantified. A little magic is a good thing -- if grounded in some realism.
Signs can be expensive. Durable ones, especially if an effort is made to find an interesting design, are not cheap. And for Democrats, signs must be printed by union shops -- good for quality, but comparatively pricey. The campaign's bean counters usually hate signs. It is not uncommon to walk into a campaign office looking for a sign and be told the workers are not allowed to give them out. WTF?
Signs are a logistical nightmare for campaign staff. They are heavy and awkward and often fit poorly in the messy small cars staffers find themselves living out of. And clamoring voters who won't do any other campaign work demand them and then complain if they are not delivered. It can hard to justify the amount of energy that sign management consumes in a campaign, especially since efficient sign distribution takes time from actual voter contact.
And yet, as Mr. Eggleston insists of his Pennsylvania turf, signs can be an important cultural marker in some places.
San Francisco is a sign town. Not too long ago it was legal for campaigns to hire a sign hanging company to decorate every wooden utility pole in every commercial neighborhood with their stuff. The visual result was hideous -- and effective for getting noticed if otherwise unknown candidates got out early and used gripping designs. I was once part of a low budget campaign that spent half its cash on signs, unusually good ones, and prevailed. Fortunately for the appearance of the city, plastering signs everywhere is no longer legal.
No, you can't quantify it. But signs have a value if we want an engaged population. And I'd argue that progressives need all the engaged citizens we can encourage -- but that's a different post.
I used to have political signs every election in my yard. Then I realized no one on my street voted when I went to the polls. Polls here are covered with signs, so much so you can't see through them. Now I won't even try to find a sign as so much hate abounds now. I don't need damage to my property.
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