America Enters the Racist-Soda Phase of the Campaign

“Democrats say that it is racist to believe … well, they say it’s racist to do anything,” J. D. Vance proclaimed during a campaign rally this week, after bringing up the need for voter-ID requirements. “I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today, and I’m sure they’re going to call that racist too,” he said, adding, “But—it’s good.” His audience laughed, and Vance laughed before punctuating the moment: “I love you guys.”

The clip has spread widely, mostly because it seems absurd. What the heck is Vance on about, with his supposedly racist Diet Mountain Dew? But don’t underestimate the power of the Dew. By invoking this bright-yellow, hyper-caffeinated soda, Vance invoked a whole history of symbolism for white, rural America.

Vance is right: It would be ridiculous for Democrats to call a soda racist, if any Democrats were actually to do that. At the same time, consumer packaged goods have histories and market demographics. Everyone might drink Coca-Cola from time to time, but Diet Coke developed such an association with women that a similar product, Coke Zero, had to be introduced to appeal to men. Marketing can also shift a product’s associations. In the mid-20th century, Coke and Pepsi were seen by consumers as “white” and “Black” drinks, respectively. Now Sprite is sometimes considered a Black soda, even if people of all races also drink it. Dr. Brown’s soda has origins in New York Jewish delicatessens. For decades, “latte swillers” offered a sneer at yuppie, lefty voters. La Croix invokes middlebrow, coastal knowledge workers. And so on.

[Read: All soda is lemon-lime soda]

Before it was a soda name, the phrase mountain dew was, for generations, Appalachian slang for “moonshine.” The soft drink, invented in Tennessee in the 1930s as a whiskey mixer, arrived very late in the evolution of lemon-lime sodas, a topic I have covered extensively for The Atlantic. (Today, the beverage industry categorizes Mountain Dew, which has a yellower color and more intense flavor than other lemon-lime sodas, as a “heavy citrus” beverage.) Most sodas were regional during the early 20th century, due to challenges related to bottling and distribution; the market for Mountain Dew was mostly limited, at first, to the part of the country where its history began. Its brand rights were sold twice in the ’60s, with PepsiCo, its current owner, taking over in 1964. Even then, the country-bumpkin sensibility persisted. Mountain Dew was marketed with a hillbilly character on the bottle and under the tagline “Yahoo, Mountain Dew. It’ll Tickle Yore Innards.” Even by the late ’80s, just before Pepsi introduced Diet Mountain Dew, the company marketed the drink with a country twang: “Dew It Country Cool.”

Mountain Dew became a national and then international drink, but it still hewed close to its origins, remaining most popular in a “Mountain Dew Belt” that includes a stretch from Alabama to West Virginia. It thus retains a deep connection to Appalachia. Writing for Eater in 2015 about her own love for Diet Mountain Dew—DMD to her kin—the Kentucky native Sarah Baird said, “When I moved away from home, it became very clear that I should be ashamed of drinking Diet Mountain Dew.” Now Vance seems to be referring to the same idea, that Mountain Dew is a drink for hillbillies, and thus a source of unwarranted derision.

[Read: Opioid of the masses]

Vance, who graduated from Yale Law School and worked for the billionaire Peter Thiel, has built his whole political career on his supposedly populist, Appalachian roots. He knows the delight, and perhaps the shame, of which Baird speaks—It’s good; I love you guys. But more important, he understands that Mountain Dew is a symbol of Appalachia, and that Appalachia is the host of America’s white poverty, despair, and addiction: the original underclass, as The Atlantic called it just before Donald Trump was elected president. “Mountain Dew Mouth” is a term for poor dental hygiene in Appalachia, and a way to make deprivation seem like personal choice. When Vance invokes Mountain Dew, he does so as a symbol of this despair, and the bias that comes with it. He does so to appeal to a disadvantaged American population that might feel that the country has forsaken them for other (equally) disadvantaged groups who aren’t white. He turns the shame of drinking Mountain Dew into a source of class and race resentment: They’ll say that anything we do is wrong. According to this reading, Mountain Dew is understood to be the drink of choice for the “basket of deplorables.”

PepsiCo understands that Mountain Dew is an underdog’s drink. In the 1990s, the company began marketing the drink to Gen Xers, back when the members of my generation were considered slackers and outsiders. It attached itself early to extreme sports, such as snowboarding and mountain biking, appealing to audiences who were also widely seen as lowlifes. And more recently, Mountain Dew started marketing the brand heavily to gamers, another group largely seen as washouts.

As such, it has enjoyed some minoritarian success. This year, Mountain Dew is the fifth-most-popular soda in America, ahead of Coke Zero and Diet Pepsi, and just behind Sprite and Diet Coke. It’s hardly fringe, and people of all races, economic classes, and geographic regions drink it. Mountain Dew won. But that victory makes it an even more effective symbol for those who see it as a cultural touch point. Everyone has heard of Mountain Dew. Surely most have tried it. But “heavy citrus” still bears private meaning for those who see the drink as distinctly, and troublingly, their own.