agingrebel.com
Daytona Bike Week just vanished into
memory and what seemed to be most memorable about rally this year was
that it marked the first anniversary of Bikers For Trump.
There do not seem to be many people in
the English speaking world who haven’t heard of Bikers For Trump. The
group has three Facebook pages: The original Bikers For Trump 2016 page
has 241,610 followers; another page called Bikers For Trump is followed
by 21,733, and another 1,035 people like another page with the same
name. Two-thousand seven hundred fifty-three people have donated
$148,240 to a Go Fund Me page that group founder Chris Cox created last
June.
Last July, candidate Trump tweeted,
“Thank you to Chris Cox and Bikers for Trump – Your support has been
amazing. I will never forget. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
And in January, after Cox bragged his
followers would form a “wall of meat” to protect Trump from protesters
at his inauguration, President elect Trump tweeted, “People are pouring
into Washington in record numbers. Bikers for Trump are on their way….”
Daytona
Cox was banging his drum in Daytona last
week. At the Broken Spoke Saloon on Wednesday he told a crowd, “The
biker has never before been seen as a demographic in a presidential
campaign race. And now we’re in a position to swing votes.”
The extent of Cox’s political power remains debatable but he hardly discovered bikers who vote.
During the 2008 presidential campaign
John McCain appeared at the Buffalo Chip Campground during the Sturgis
Rally with his wife where he was greeted by a big crowd, loud cheers and
revving engines. “This is my first time here but I recognize that
sound. It’s the sound of freedom,” McCain said. Six weeks later McCain
appeared with Sarah Palin and a bike building family called the Teutels –
who at the time had a television show titled Orange County Choppers
– at a rally in Media, Pennsylvania. McCain stood by a motorcycle and
vowed, “Sarah and I are going to get on that chopper and ride it right
to Washington and raise hell when we get there.”
Not to be one-upped, during the same
campaign, the Democrats and the AFL-CIO started a group called “Bikers
for Obama” which amounted to about 30 guys from the Letter Carriers and
the Teamsters. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin is an honorary member of the
Night Wolves. Then Chris Cox invented Bikers For Trump. Life happened in
that order.
Trump Branding
There has recently been a little
speculation about how much Cox counts with motorcycle enthusiasts and
what Trump is after when he portrays Harley-Davidson as a friend of
American labor.
An article in the Guardian last
week addressed the subject and quoted both George Christie – who is not
a Trump fan – and a professional, New York based branding expert named
David Langton. Langton told the British daily paper, “Harley Davidson is
the perfect brand for president Trump to associate himself with. It’s
rugged, regular-guy, tough and not too elite. It’s not fussy (or
Italian) like Moto Guzzi. It’s not the efficient machines of Yamaha or
Honda (or Japanese). It’s all American. There is a short-term advantage
for the brand to associate with Trump’s form of politics. But since
Harley-Davidson has a long established brand they do need to be careful
in aligning themselves with Trump. Because Harley-Davison is a
long-term, quality brand and Trump, alas, isn’t.”
Eventually everybody can decide whether
Bikers For Trump is, like Harley, “a long-term, quality brand” or just
the current version of Joe the Plumber Wurzelbacher. Cox seems to think
he is becoming a player. He told the Daytona Beach News “his
organization is planning its first international push into Germany and
France.”
