In the United States, political merchandise is a strange and peculiar phenomenon

The Maga hat is a controversial symbol of right-wing thinking around the world. Holly Baxter considers how clothing is being used to win elections

More than a million Maga hats have been sold since 2016 (Getty)

On Monday this week, I met with a contact in the Democratic Party at a coffee shop near Union Square in Manhattan to talk about the 2020 election. He’s been helping put together some key policies for a couple of candidates; I’ve been asking him for tips every so often, as well as contacts close to other strategists. We were having a perfectly amiable discussion about which contender for the president was probably going to triumph in the primaries when he suddenly went quiet.

“What is it?” I asked, and he leaned over and said to me in a low voice: “I’ve just spotted the only man in America wearing a Tulsi Gabbard hat.”

I turned around and there it was, an undeniable campaign hat for “TULSI 2020” perched on the head of a middle-aged businessman wearing tweed. It was a strange thing to see. There are candidates who have cult-like followings already – Bernie Sanders, whose followers have turned up to his rallies in their droves since before 2016; Elizabeth Warren, whose selfie line in New York City took four hours to get to the front of; even Andrew Yang, whose backers turn up during debates holding signs saying “Math” (Make America Think Harder) – but Tulsi Gabbard isn’t one of them. She’s a strange candidate, one whose views don’t seem particularly socially or fiscally liberal, and who almost didn’t turn up to take her place on the Democratic debate stage last week because she believed the process was “rigged” and the media was against her. She speaks little about policy, except for one: the need for America to pull out of conflict zones generally – and Syria specifically. The fact that this is the only policy she usually talks about has led people to openly speculate that she’s an apologist, or even a puppet, for Bashar al-Assad or Vladimir Putin. It’s not the best PR you could have in an election where Americans are still reeling from accusations of Russian interference three years before.

But back to the hat.

Political merchandise is a whole phenomenon in the US. Where particularly engaged Brits might put a “Labour” sticker on the front window of their sitting room, Americans will walk around with their loyalties literally emblazoned on their chests – whether or not their chosen candidate is actually standing in an election. Weeks ago, I saw a man walking through Brooklyn with “BOOT-edge-edge” written on his T-shirt; it was a somewhat obscure reference to Pete Buttigieg, the Indiana mayor who is standing for president and whose surname barely anyone can pronounce. His Twitter profile has “BOOT-edge-edge” at the end of it. As a journalist who has to know those sorts of things for work, I understood the T-shirt. I wondered how many other people in the chicken restaurant we were standing in did.

Trump’s online merchandise store – or “the Maga collection”, as it styles itself, a la fashion houses – pumps out new clothing and accessories like there’s no tomorrow. At the moment, you can buy a seasonably spooky pumpkin-themed hat for Halloween with “KEEP AMERICA GREAT” written on the back, as well as a “WHERE’S HUNTER?” T-shirt which references Hunter Biden, the son of Democrat frontrunner Joe whose business dealings in Ukraine have been the subject of many a Trump speech lately. You can get a limited edition fine art poster of The Donald jumping out the White House like a superhero, and a pair of beverage coolers or a mug with the words “WITCH HUNT!” on them. And then there are the infamous plastic straws, unveiled a few months ago in a bizarre move to poke fun at “liberal paper straws” when single-use plastics and their contribution to climate change were in the news.

The official Tulsi Gabbard shop doesn’t offer caps like the one I saw the man in the coffee shop wearing today, which only makes the whole episode more intriguing. Was he, as my fellow coffee drinker suspected, her campaign manager? Did he fashion his own hat in his spare time after being unusually moved by her platform of extending Medicare and pulling out of unnecessary wars? Is he doing it ironically?

We may never know the answer, but I can tell you one thing: it’s inspired me to seek some political merchandise out for myself. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are my favourite candidates so far, so I might treat myself to a tote bag stating “I’M RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT, BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT GIRLS DO” or a Greg Auerbach poster of Bernie standing outside the White House, holding a placard which reads “WE ALL DESERVE A FUTURE”. It’s going to be a historic election, so maybe I’ll get them all.