A quick scroll through the official Elizabeth Warren merch store reveals a teeming marketplace of campaign wares: branded T-shirts, lawn signs, bumper stickers, and an assortment of buttons. Ardent Warren fans can proclaim their affection in hundreds of combinations, and more than a few niches. There’s a coffee cup which reads, “I like my coffee like I like my unions: strong,” and a onesie that advises to “Dream big. Fight hard. Nap often.” But one of the most frequently recurring taglines across the campaign merchandise is, as one might expect, “Warren has a plan for that.”

The phrase, while not an official campaign slogan, has become the most common and recognizable calling card for Warren supporters. Like any good meme, it began online, filtered onto the campaign’s Twitter account, into the candidate’s stump speeches, and onto handmade signs, reinforcing her formidable brand as the candidate who has a plan for everything.



At present, Warren’s website contains more than 50 relatively detailed policy plans—chances are, she does have a plan for that, whatever “that” may be. But as far as campaign taglines go, “She Has a Plan For That” is a disappointing entry that pinches at the nerve of reservation that some on the left have regarding Warren’s rise in popularity. It’s a technocratic rallying cry, one that romanticizes the idea of having ideas rather than celebrating any central ethos within the ideas themselves. What’s worse, it implicitly lulls its reader or listener into a false sense of security, assuring them that they needn’t be too critical or discerning, since someone has already done the work for them. And there is considerable work left to be done to bring any one of Warren’s litany of ideas to fruition.

For a campaign slogan to be effective, it must tick a number of boxes. First, it has to offer a broad-strokes pitch about the candidate’s ideology or political approach. Next, it should respond to or preempt the alternative messages being offered to voters. Finally, it must situate the candidate as a part of a larger coalition or movement. “Make America Great Again,” the ubiquitous slogan of President Trump, succeeds in hitting all three of these points—with particular attention to ideological signaling. In four words, Trump stokes nostalgia and resentment in equal measure by combining a biting truth (that America is not, in fact, great) with a fantasy (that it ever was). In half that number, President Obama catalyzed optimism in the electorate with his 2008 dual slogans, “Hope” and “Change.”



Far from providing a general vision of the future or clear pitch, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 slogan, “I’m With Her,” shifted the burden of selling the candidate from Clinton to the voters themselves. “I’m With Her” offered little more than the fact of a woman candidate and the vague sense of inevitability to her election (a musical number from Stephen Colbert’s “Democratic National Convention Late Show” special included the lyric “you must rejoice / there is no choice / she is your destiny”).

