The Democrats Are the ‘Liberty Biberty’ Party — and the Unforced Error That Could Flip the Midterms

She’s the Scrappy-Doo of corporate mascots — a cloying, cringeworthy new character that repulses the target audience. It’s simply a bad concept: Instead of coming across as cute or clever, it feels cynical and self-serving. The audience hates it!

But we’ll get back to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in just a sec.

Insurance companies run the damnedest ad campaigns, and it costs ‘em a pretty penny: Every year, Progressive, Allstate, GEICO, and State Farm spend over a billion EACH on advertising. (Aflac, surprisingly, spends “only” about $100 million.)

So there are lots of opportunities to throw feces at a wall and see what sticks.

But 99% of the time, Big Insurance sticks to marketing campaigns built around a specific protagonist. And not just any protagonist either — only the crème de la crème will make the final cut:

And, for many years, all was well. Life was predictable: Insurance commercials ran in between gambling and pharmaceutical commercials. We heeded advice from geckos, emus, ducks, and Mannings — just as God intended.

Then, on July 20, 2026, Liberty Mutual unleashed Liberty Biberty on an unsuspecting world.

In 2019, Liberty Mutual aired a commercial where an incompetent actor flubbed the company name. A lesser brand would’ve shrugged its shoulders and said, “Meh, that was a marginally memorable ad campaign from seven years ago, let’s come up with something better.” But the geniuses at Liberty Mutual knew they were sitting on a PR goldmine!

Jenna Lebel, Liberty Mutual’s chief marketing officer, explained:

It started with the 2019 ad when our “Bad Actor” character struggled to pronounce “Liberty Mutual.” Since then, “Liberty Biberty” has taken on a life of its own. It caught on quickly, people repeated it, and it became part of the internet lexicon. Brands can spend years and millions of dollars trying to build this kind of cultural equity from scratch. We already had it. How do we harness that equity and give it a physical form and purpose?

The answer became the Liberty Biberty character. What I love about this campaign is we’re not manufacturing a mascot and hoping it sticks. We’re taking something people already know and repeat and giving it a bigger role in the world.

[…]

Personality-wise, he’s friendly, optimistic, and a little quirky. He has a point of view on the world and he’s not afraid to share it.  He speaks to people like their friend, with this charming mix of confidence and honesty.

Trouble is that everyone flippin’ hates it. The social media backlash has been extraordinary. There’s actually a (tongue-in-cheek, I think) anti-Liberty Biberty protest planned on Sunday at 2 p.m. in front of Liberty Mutual’s corporate headquarters. 

Even left-wingers despise it — including John Oliver, who said Liberty Biberty looks like “Big Bird’s sleep paralysis demon.” The concept is repulsing everyone it’s meant to attract!

Which puts Liberty Mutual in a helluva squeeze, because mascots and marketing campaigns take time. Rome wasn’t built in a day; neither were Ronald McDonald, Mickey Mouse, Captain Crunch, or any of the other ultra-successful corporate mascots. They required patience and exposure — and so will Liberty Biberty.

So maybe the smartest strategy is to double down, reinvest, and keep promoting!

But on the other hand, you can only polish a turd so much. Some concepts simply don’t fly. Emotionally or intellectually, something about it alienates your target audience.

Yeah, you could continue to double down, but if a concept is a loser, you’re throwing money away. Because that’s how life goes: Not every mascot is a winner. Not every concept will succeed. A wise executive must know when to pull the plug.

Because if you don’t cut ties with loser mascots and loser concepts, you’ll destroy your corporate brand.

This brings us back to Rep. Omar, the Somali-born Minnesota congresswoman who’s currently under investigation for federal immigration crimes. The Democrats, quite naturally, are outraged.

It is a basic principle of American democracy that the government can’t selectively target individuals simply because of their political beliefs or what they say. But that’s exactly what the Trump Administration is doing to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. To understand why this is so appalling, it’s important to know the facts. Congresswoman Omar came to this country with her father when she was 12 years old. Five years later, her father became a naturalized citizen. If Ilhan had been 18 at the time, she would have had to apply for citizenship separately. But because she was 17, she became a naturalized citizen automatically. Congresswoman Omar went on to graduate from college, work as a community organizer, become the first Somali-American legislator elected to public office in the U.S., and win a seat in Congress. There, she has been one of the Trump Administration’s fiercest critics, which has led the president to repeatedly single her out as someone who he believes does not belong in this country. Now the Administration is actively trying to deport Congresswoman Omar, seemingly based solely on the unsubstantiated theory that she was actually 18 when her father was naturalized, and therefore is not a citizen. Federal agents have raided her home, confiscated personal records, and seized her phone — all to try and uncover a nonexistent smoking gun from 20 years ago that will somehow make their case. Think about that. The full weight of the federal government is being brought down on a law-abiding elected official because she has dared to criticize the president. And it’s not the first time this has happened. Under President Trump, the Justice Department has repeatedly gone after those he considers his political enemies — from the Attorney General of New York, to the former head of the FBI, to members of the Federal Reserve. In those cases, the prosecutions either stalled or were dismissed for having no basis in law, and the same is likely to happen in this case. But not before Congresswoman Omar’s life has been turned upside down, her legal bills have piled up, and she’s been forced to spend time fighting unsubstantiated charges instead of serving the people of Minnesota. The fact that any president, or any administration, is willing to engage in such transparent efforts to intimidate someone should outrage all Americans, regardless of how they feel about Congresswoman Omar’s political views. Because if this becomes the new normal, there’s no reason to believe it will stop with her — or that future presidents, in either party, won’t do the same.

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 18, 2026

The congresswoman’s ultimate guilt or innocence will, I suspect, be determined in a courtroom. Perhaps the evidence will lead to her denaturalization; perhaps it won’t. That’s something none of us know right now — President Barack Obama included.

But in the court of public opinion, Ilhan Omar is the corporate mascot of the Democrat Party’s DSA wing.

She’s not the only mascot. (Bernie Sanders, Zohran Mamdani, and AOC are, too.) But because of her vitriolic anti-Trump, anti-Israel, anti-American rhetoric — and her murky immigration status — she represents a very specific fear that the GOP should exploit.

Omar doesn’t just represent the DSA wing. She also represents the danger of Islamism, the exploitation of U.S. immigration loopholes, and fundamental questions about what kind of country we ought to be.

As well as the kind of country we must never be.

This election season, the mainstream media has published thousands of articles about Donald Trump’s poor approval ratings and the MAGA movement’s decline in popularity. Every day there’s more doom-and-gloom for the GOP. 

Yet the media seldom mention that MAGA still polls higher than the DSA and/or socialism.

President Obama’s passionate defense of Omar has elevated her story. He used the power of his presidential prestige to shine a bright spotlight on the congresswoman’s plight — and it’s now a national issue. What once was below the fold is now above it.

This was an unforced error that could swing the midterms.

Because she’s Liberty Biberty. The public doesn’t like her. Not even in Minnesota: In local opinion polls, she’s literally the least liked politician in the entire state.

The dots are easy to connect: Ilhan Omar. Abdul El-Sayed. Zohran Mamdani. The national rise of DSA candidates — and the Democrat Party bequeathing ‘em the keys to the kingdom.

And with President Obama attacking Israelis as land-thieves in Ireland, campaigning for Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, and defending Ilhan Omar, it’s now directly tied to the Democratic establishment. His boneheaded intervention made the DSA brand and the Democrat Party brand indistinguishable.

This isn’t a fringe movement anymore; it’s the whole damn party!

Mascots work for the exact same reason guilt-by-association works: People judge you by the company you keep.

Good or bad, their attributes become your own.

Memo to the GOP: President Obama just gave you a big freaking political gift. Don’t overthink it — accept it.

And make the crimes, corruption, and caterwauling of Ilhan Omar a national issue in the midterms. Force every Democratic candidate to either defend her or disavow her. 

Get ‘em all on the record — and see if they have cojones to oppose Saint Obama.

And if they don’t, tar-and-feather ‘em as her associates, enablers, and accomplices. Take full advantage of her utter lack of likeability. Join ‘em at the hip.

It’s really that simple.

Because, on one side, there’s the GOP — waging war on corruption, lowering costs for taxpayers, solving the border, fixing immigration, and reducing crime to record lows.

It’s a great story. (Someone should tell it.)

And on the other side is every Democratic candidate who’s protecting Ilhan Omar. 

Let her brand become theirs — until the Dems become the party of Liberty Biberty. Every stinkin’ one of ‘em. 

Force the Democrats to double down on a losing concept!

(I never thought I’d be nostalgic for geckos, emus, ducks, and Mannings, yet here we are.)

One Last Thing: 2026 will reach a crescendo with the midterm elections. Nothing less than the future of our country teeters in the balance.

Never before have the political battle lines been so clearly defined. Blue wave or red wall, the 2026 midterms will transform our country.

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