The Battle of McDonald’s isn’t about the economy. It’s about the decline of a cultural icon that mirrors that of America.
Times sure have changed. It used to be that US presidential candidates argued about who best served in the military. Now, it’s about who best served up fries. The “McDonald’s vote” has arguably never mattered more than it does in this election.
Republican former (and potential future) President Donald Trump showed up at a McDonald’s franchise in Feasterville, Pennsylvania recently, tied on an apron and worked the drive-thru window serving up french fries. He joked that after 15 minutes, he had worked longer at McDonald’s than his Democratic opponent, Vice-President Kamala Harris, who had said that she worked at the world-renowned fast-food chain in her youth.
An online army subsequently took to the review site Yelp in an all-out online assault against the restaurant that hosted the campaign stunt. “The atmosphere was creepy with a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist behind the counter. Yuk,” wrote one reviewer, referencing Trump’s legal woes. “Customer service was a joke. Senile old man got bronzer on my fries, didn’t wear gloves. Repeated himself several times,” said another. “Usually I hold high praise for a company that employs the mentally impaired but this one seemed more off than usual,” added yet another. And it went on and on for pages…until Yelp disabled user submissions.
It was Harris who first made the restaurant a campaign war zone. “I worked at @McDonalds when I was a student, doing french fries and ice cream. There wasn’t a family relying on me to pay the bills – but that’s the reality for too many workers today. Proud to stand with @SEIU today for livable wages and a safe working environment,” she tweeted in June 2024, addressing the two million nationwide employees of the Service Employees International Union.
McDonald’s is acting like the country of Switzerland in a war – or a girl being fought over for a prom date. “McDonald’s does not endorse candidates for elected office and that remains true in this race for the next President. We are not red or blue – we are golden,” the company said in a statement.
So, what’s the big deal about McDonald’s? It’s about more than just economic policy in an election where that’s the number one issue. “I think part of the difference between me and my opponent includes our perspective on the needs of the American people and what our responsibility, then, is to meet those needs,” Harris said, trying to explain in an MSNBC interview why she even brought up McDonald’s in the first place. But that doesn’t explain why McDonald’s strikes such a cultural nerve, or why that’s particularly the case right now.
North Americans, notably Generation X and older, relate to McDonald’s on a visceral level because of its cameo appearances in so many core memories. The birthday parties in the McDonald’s play park or caboose. Walking in the door under the Golden Arches at the crack of dawn after all-night high school graduation celebrations, passing friends dozing off with their heads on tables en route to buying some hotcakes and syrup. The community sports events featuring McD’s famously bright “orange drink.” Hitting the drive-thru after gymnastics practice to wolf down Big Macs to give hard working parents an affordable reprieve from cooking after a long day. Dates that consisted of a trip through the drive-thru for a picnic in a local park. Counting the minutes until Saint Patrick’s Day, because it meant mint green Shamrock Shakes. Looking forward to a first job experience working with friends from the neighborhood.
Those were the golden years of the Golden Arches, and of America, which are virtually synonymous with each other – as much in their former greatness as in their perceived decline. If things were still so great, then why is there so much nostalgia for those days? Now, people complain en masse about the ice cream machines being broken. The prices skyrocketed, with menu items costing on average 40% more just since 2019 alone, according to the company’s president himself. The cabooses vanished. McDonalds tried to be more sober and serious with its color scheme, making it seem less inviting and more like a Judgy McJudgerson, towards people going in for a quick sundae while dressed in a wet swimsuit and flip flops, with just a towel wrapped around your waist after swim practice (not that I would know anything about that).
Then, just like America itself, it got globalization wrong, adapting its menu to ”regional tastes” with things like the “cottage cheese and radish McMuffin,” porridge-based “Burbur Ayam McD” and the “Pizza McPuff.” It’s the culinary equivalent of US nation-building as a means of masking foreign invasion. How about dropping the act already and just conquering hearts and minds with those greasy apple pies that I can’t find anymore – the ones with the filling that burn a hole straight through your shirt if you accidentally drop any.
Even Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now on Team Trump in the wake of launching his presidential run vowing to “Make America Healthy Again,” leveraged Trump’s campaign stunt to lament the good old days. “Did you know that McDonald’s used to use beef tallow to make their fries from 1940 until phasing it out in favor of seed oils in 1990? This switch was made because saturated animal fats were thought to be unhealthy, but we have since discovered that seed oils are one of the driving causes of the obesity epidemic,” he tweeted. “Americans should have every right to eat out at a restaurant without being unknowingly poisoned by heavily subsidized seed oils.”
McDonald’s started wading into social controversies, making Black Lives Matter ads in the wake of the George Floyd controversy. It was rewarded for its efforts with the ACLU accusing it of “woke-washing” its lack of paid sick leave for “black and brown workers.” In 2018, the company’s chief global diversity officer pointed out that they were flipping the arches from an ‘M’ shape to a ‘W’ to celebrate International Women’s Day.
Sigh. Are all the ice cream machines fixed yet? Can a working parent buy their kids some McD’s again without having to take out another mortgage on their home? Somewhere along the line, McDonald’s lost its way – just like the rest of America’s institutions.
It used to be a place where kids worked in their first job. Now, because the government has destroyed the economy so badly, it’s apparently supposed to be a place that feeds entire families, with the company now paying parental leave and tuition assistance. What the heck? When I was in university, a McDonald’s job WAS the tuition assistance.
The “McDonald’s vote” in play for this election consists of those who realize that there’s something systematically wrong with American culture, diluted and destroyed by misguided establishment policies, and aware of the link to the country’s economic woes. A YouGov poll this month found that 65% of Americans believe that America is headed in the wrong direction.
Harris says that “America is still that shining city upon a hill that inspires people around the world.” Trump, meanwhile, recently said of the US that it’s “like a garbage can… Every time I come up and talk about what they’ve done to our country, I get angrier, and it’s the first time I’ve ever said ‘garbage can,’ but it’s a very accurate description.”
Only one of these people sounds like they’re fed up with the broken ice cream machine as the status quo. The other is standing there at the counter, smiling at the customers, and blaming the guy who keeps pointing out the problem.
