On Friday’s episode of “Real Time,” host Bill Maher said he was fearful that the Democratic Party is becoming a “ghost brand,” drawing a comparison between the party’s waning popularity and the downfall of former department store giant, Sears.
“The cautionary tale of the ghost brand is an important one because it applies not only to business but also to politics. I fear the Democratic Party is at risk of becoming a ghost brand too,” he warned. “Like Sears, it used to be mighty and ascendant and popular.”
Maher described a ghost brand as “a company or a store that, like Sears, still exists, but only as a pathetic shell of its former self. The brands that make you say, ‘Oh, they’re still making that.’ Because they screwed themselves out of relevance and now their logos haunt us, wandering, neither alive nor dead like Mitch McConnell.”
Pointing to the fact that, at one point, Sears accounted for 1% of the entire U.S. economy and 41% of the country’s appliance market, the company eventually faded into obscurity — leaving behind its status as an American staple. He expressed concern that the same story may be playing out with the Democratic Party’s position in American politics.
“Democrats once controlled Congress and the Supreme Court, or at least competitively. But now, even at a time when President Trump is turning 250 years of democracy into jean shorts, the Democrats have their lowest rating in 35 years. 63% unfavorable,” he noted.
“What happened? I don’t know. What happened to Sears?” Maher continued. “It used to be synonymous with the American dream because it kept faith with what the customer wanted. Did we love Sears? No. But that was beside the point. You just went.”
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The “Real Time” host also mentioned another American ghost brand, the adult lifestyle brand Playboy, joking that Sears was the one who sold your father a mattress — and Playboy magazine was what he hid under it.
According to Maher, Playboy used to be a “surefire product” — until they started “messing around with the formula.”
“Like the Democratic Party, Playboy decided they didn’t need straight men anymore. They put transgender women and gay men on the cover and, predictably, sales — like their subscribers’ penises, collapsed,” Maher argued. “The staff began using terms like intersectionality, sex positivity and privileging. And in response, Playboy readers use terms like, ‘No thanks, get the f— out of here, and bye-bye.’”
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Barneys, once a dominant force in American retail that later became a ghost brand, was forced to close its flagship Madison Avenue store after filing for bankruptcy in 2019. The once-great — now bankrupt — retail fashion brand was Maher’s final victim of analogy for the night.
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“I’m not making this up just because it’s Halloween, but after Barney’s closed for good in 2020, it became, yes, a Spirit Halloween,” he ribbed. “I’m just saying Democrats need to get their s— together because America needs two political parties, not one party and one Halloween store.”
