Timeline: A few years in the future. The Ford Motor Co. realizes that not only does it need to electrify its fleet in order to compete, it needs an electric-only brand to go toe-to-toe with Tesla.
In Dearborn, Michigan, and at ad agencies on both coasts, the best marketing brains America has to offer rack themselves trying to come up with a name for the new division. After too many sleepless nights to count, the brand name is finally set for its unveiling.
It’ll be called … Edsel.
You probably think they should have tried harder. You’re not wrong — but don’t tell that to President Joe Biden’s White House, which decided the shot in the arm the Build Back Better™ agenda needed involves resurrecting a near-facsimile of one of the most infamous ad campaigns from the Obama years.
On Thursday, as the president rolled out his $1.75 trillion compromise budget, his team also rolled out a cartoon woman who would be helped by the plan — Linda.
“Linda is a working mother in Peoria, Illinois,” the set of illustrations begins, as our hard-hatted heroine is shown in the middle of some kind of warehouse. (As for her location, one gets the idea someone said, during the brainstorming process for the cartoon, “Yeah, but will this play in Peoria?” And thus was a legend born.)
“She works at a local manufacturing facility as a production worker and earns $40,000,” the cartoon’s copy reads. “She is pregnant with her son, Leo.”
Wait — is the Biden administration implying she’s pregnant with a person? As in, not just a clump of cells? Someone alert Planned Parenthood. An intervention needs to be held at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., stat.
“Once Leo is born, Linda begins receiving Child Tax Credits of $300 per month ($3600 annually) to help cover essential costs like groceries, rent, and medicine,” the cartoon reads, showing Linda shopping for veggies with Leo at the supermarket.
Leo’s dad, who might also be counted on to pay for these things? Don’t look for him. He’s nowhere in the comic.
Leo continues to grow, and “the government helps cover the costs for his day care, guaranteeing that Linda doesn’t need to pay more than 7 percent of her income on child care.”
Forget Obama’s ‘Life of Julia.’ To sell his infrastructure deal, Biden White House releases new Life of Linda: pic.twitter.com/YoSMm1XVYK
— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) October 28, 2021
When Leo leaves high school, the government takes care of him some more, giving him free community college and more Pell Grants. He (prepare to stifle uncontrollable laughter) “lands a good-paying, union job as a wind turbine technician.”
And don’t worry, Linda’s being taken care of, too!
“Later in life, Linda needs home and hearing care,” the cartoon reads. “Thanks to President Biden’s plan, Linda can access affordable hearing care through Medicare, and Leo is able to afford at home elder care for his mom.”
— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) October 28, 2021
If this all sounds familiar, it’s because this way of selling the Democrat program as cradle-to-grave care from bureaucrats was tried previously by President Barack Obama during his 2012 re-election campaign. The “Life of Julia” internet slide show became one of the most infamous gaffes in recent presidential campaign memory.
In it, Julia was taken care of by the Obama campaign from the moment she was born until the moment she breathed her last. (The part about her voting after being embalmed wasn’t included in the slideshow presumably because it didn’t look good for the Democrats.)
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In an abstract for “The Life of Julia: A Failed Progressive Political Campaign,” a 2019 article published in the Pepperdine Policy Review, author Caleb Jasso noted the self-sabotaging nature of the ad campaign.
“Reaction to the campaign ad was so negative that it was quickly removed from President Obama’s official website, and to this day cannot be found there,” the abstract read. “Staunch resistance to the ad stemmed from the accusation that it glorified the idea of a welfare state and illustrated what a life without genuine purpose or meaning would look like.”
BTW no sign of Dad in the “Life of Linda”
— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) October 28, 2021
And notice, too, the fact that the only father to be seen in either ad is the paternalistic hand of the state. This is all web designer Julia or production worker Linda needs to worry about. From cradle to grave, Uncle Sam is Daddy Sam, too.
And someone in the Biden administration decided that this message needed to be repeated nine years later to sell its $1.75 trillion spending extravaganza, the fourth such trillion-dollar package since Biden took over.
Why?
“Bereft of creativity, imagination, and confidence in the average American to navigate her life competently, the Biden administration has ponderously reprised ‘The Life of Julia,'” Noah Rothman wrote Thursday in conservative Jewish publication Commentary.
“Emulating the uninspired boosters in Hollywood, the White House has rebooted this property as ‘The Life of Linda,’ focusing on a new protagonist with an appropriately marginalized identity. That modest alteration to the plot doesn’t make the content any less nauseating.”
It’s also unlikely to make it any more effective.
Meet 2021’s political Edsel, another attempt to normalize single parenting — so long as the government pays for it.
Wait until Leo finds out how much this “free” stuff ends up costing his generation.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
