芝加哥-当肯塔基州众议员蕾切尔·罗伯茨第一次竞选她的席位时，她被建议不要使用政治竞选中常见的词:“价值观”
罗伯茨现在是州议会中唯一代表北肯塔基州的民主党人，他正在辛辛那提郊外的一个竞争激烈的地区参加2020年的特别选举，当时共和党人控制了关于“自由”、“爱国主义”和美国国旗的言论。
“我会喝醉的，”罗伯茨说她被告知。"共和党人会说民主党人不是价值观的政党."
本周，在民主党全国委员会走一走，情况就完全不同了。
“自由”这个词似乎挂在每个与会者和演讲者的嘴边，也是碧昂斯的热门歌曲和现在的竞选国歌的名字。观众高呼“美国!”戳破发言者的言论，因为他们挥舞着同样的标志。人群中挤满了印有副总统卡玛拉·哈里斯和明尼苏达州州长蒂姆·沃尔兹名字的迷彩帽。音乐家杰森·伊斯贝尔演唱了乡村热门歌曲《不仅仅是免费的》
此次大会标志着民主党几十年来收回爱国主义的努力达到高潮，此前多年来，共和党人拥有围绕“自由”和美国国旗的信息。
多年来，该党一直哀叹共和党人对爱国主义象征的控制，这种垄断始于里根总统时期，民主党人无法打破。
“在80年代和90年代，共和党用枪夺取了自由。第二修正案是美国的第一自由，”吉姆·凯斯勒说，他是中左翼智库“第三条道路”的联合创始人。"生命权也是自由的一种形式."在民主党支持自由的地方，这是一张行为不端的许可证，比如焚烧国旗。"
现在，在被割让给共和党几十年后，“自由”这个词从芝加哥联合中心的墙上反弹回来。民主党人正陶醉于他们信息财富的逆转。
“收回国旗，收回自由和民主，我认为这是一种广泛的感觉。但我认为，在过去的几个周期中，如何以一种具有广泛吸引力并引起人们共鸣的方式做到这一点变得越来越清楚，”一位与哈里斯团队有联系的民主党策略师说。
在被爱国主义拒之门外几十年后，民主党人表示，他们的死敌前总统唐纳德·特朗普给了他们一个机会。
2021年1月6日的起义受到特朗普关于2020年选举结果的阴谋论的刺激，并由他的支持者领导，动摇了前总统向继任者的权力转移。最高法院废除宪法堕胎保护的决定允许民主党人在他们长期处于防守状态的文化战争中继续进攻。
民主党人说，突然间，民主摇摇欲坠。妇女的身体自主权受到威胁。争取“自由”的战斗开始了。
“多布斯案的判决突然给了民主党人一个机会，在爱国主义这个问题上按下重置按钮。我认为唐纳德·川普在1月6日给了我们一个机会，让我们重新开始这些主题，”前阿拉巴马州参议员道格·琼斯说，他指的是最高法院的裁决。
“特朗普和1月6日以及多布斯裁决的结合，给了民主党人一个重新设定并说‘这才是自由的真正含义’的机会。这不是自由，伙计们，这是压迫，这是专制。自由意味着自由，这就是我们的主张。"
民主党人没有马上冲进大门。
由于总统乔·拜登(Joe Biden)仍是该党的旗手，他和他的竞选团队专注于为民主而战，同时也推动堕胎保护的法典化——这两个问题在竞选信息中并没有一贯和明确的联系。
但是在总统结束了他的竞选，哈里斯成为民主党候选人名单上的替代者后，信息发生了变化。
“自由”成了她的战斗口号——哈里斯和整个党推动的高潮。
哈里斯在副总统办公室的前联络主任贾马尔·西蒙斯(Jamal Simmons)说，“有一段时间，民主党人一直担心共和党人会接管这些典型的美国词汇，‘自由’，‘自由’”。“民主党人正在试图解决这个问题。副总统非常关注民主党如何改写这个词。
现在，“自由”被用作一个统称。
除了获得生殖健康保健和民主进程的自由，哈里斯还利用这一信息推动从学生上学不受枪击的自由到经济上“出人头地”的自由等一切。
“我们是在为自由而战吗?我也是这么想的，”美国劳工联合会-产业工会联合会主席利兹·舒勒在民主党全国委员会妇女核心小组的一次会议上说。“自由不是淹没在医疗债务中。自由就是和做同样工作的人挣同样的工资……自由就是对自己的身体做出自己的决定。”
可以肯定的是，民主党人并没有主导这场关于“自由”的战争。
共和党人仍然依靠爱国主义，用美国国旗装饰他们的集会和西装上衣翻领，并将李·格林伍德的“作为一个美国人而自豪”变成一首保守的赞美诗。该党仍然能够说，它希望为军队提供比国会中的民主党对手更多的资金，他们坚持将五角大楼支出的增加与其他国内优先事项的资金增加相匹配。
但对民主党人来说，仅仅是参与竞选政治中最有力的象征之一就是一股新鲜空气。
民主党全国委员会代表、现任肯塔基州众议院民主党领袖罗伯茨告诉美国广播公司新闻网，“我认为，这篇报道采用了其中的一些词，并说它们属于共和党人，就像红色卡车司机帽显然只属于共和党人一样。”。"我们要求，不，这些是通用词."
How Democrats at DNC are seizing on 'freedom' theme after years of GOP monopoly
CHICAGO --When Kentucky state Rep. Rachel Roberts was first running for her seat, she was advised to not use a word common in political campaigns: "values."
Roberts, now the only Democrat representing northern Kentucky in the state legislature, was running in a 2020 special election in a competitive region of the state just outside of Cincinnati at a time when Republicans had a stranglehold on rhetoric on "freedom," "patriotism" and the American flag.
"I'd get hammered," Roberts said she was told. "The Republicans would say Democrats aren't the party of values."
Walking around the Democratic National Committee this week, things couldn't be more different.
The word "freedom" is seemingly on the lips of every attendee and speaker -- and the name of Beyonce's hit song and now-campaign anthem. Audience chants of "USA!" puncture speakers' remarks as they wave signs saying the same. Camo hats bearing the names of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pockmark the crowd. And musician Jason Isbell performed the country hit song "Something More Than Free."
The convention marks a culmination of decades of Democratic efforts to take back patriotism after years of Republicans owning messaging around "freedom" and the American flag.
For years, the party lamented the domination Republicans held on symbols of patriotism, a monopoly that started during the Reagan presidency and that Democrats couldn't break.
"You had a Republican Party that in the 80s and 90s, seized the freedom mantle using guns. The Second Amendment was America's first freedom," said Jim Kessler, the co-founder of Third Way, a center-left think tank. "Right to life was a version of freedom too." Where Democrats supported freedom was a license to behave poorly, like burning a flag."
Now, after having been ceded to Republicans for decades, "freedom" is the word bouncing off the walls of Chicago's United Center. And Democrats are reveling in the reversal of their messaging fortunes.
"Reclaiming the flag and reclaiming freedom and democracy, I think that was a feeling broadly. But I think within the last several cycles, it became clearer how to do that in a way that had broad appeal and resonated with people," said one Democratic strategist with ties to Harris' team.
After decades being shut out from leaning into patriotism, Democrats said they were handed an opening by their sworn enemy -- former President Donald Trump.
The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, spurred by Trump's conspiracy theories about the 2020 election results and led by his supporters, jolted the transfer of power from the former president to his successor. And the Supreme Court decision scrapping constitutional abortion protections allowed Democrats to go on offense on a culture war in which they'd long been in a defensive crouch.
Suddenly, Democrats said, democracy was teetering. Women's bodily autonomy was at risk. And the battle for "freedom" was on.
"The Dobbs decision all of a sudden gave Democrats the opportunity for a reset button on that issue, on patriotism. And I think Donald Trump gave us the opportunity on Jan. 6 to start retaking those themes," former Alabama Sen. Doug Jones, D, said, referencing the Supreme Court's ruling.
"The combination of Trump and January 6 and the Dobbs decision gave Democrats an opportunity to reset and say, 'this is really what freedom means. That is not freedom, folks, that is oppression, that is autocracy. Freedom means liberty, and this is what we stand for.'"
Democrats didn't storm the gates right away.
With President Joe Biden still as the party's standard bearer, he and his campaign focused on a fight for democracy, while also pushing for codification of abortion protections -- two issues that weren't consistently and explicitly linked in campaign messaging.
But after the president ended his campaign and Harris rose as his replacement atop Democrats' tickets, the messaging changed.
"Freedom" became her rallying cry -- the climax of a push by Harris and the party at large.
"Democrats had been concerned about Republicans taking over these quintessentially American words for a while, 'freedom,' 'liberty,'" said Jamal Simmons, Harris' former communications director in the vice president's office. "The Democrats were trying to figure it out. The vice president was very focused on how Democrats can recast this word."
Now, "freedom" is being used as a catchall.
Beyond freedom to access reproductive health care and a democratic process, the message is being used by Harris to push for everything from freedom for students to go to school without being shot to freedom to "get ahead" economically and more.
"Are we fighting for freedom? That's what I thought," AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee's women's caucus. "Freedom is not drowning in medical debt. Freedom is earning the same salary as a man does for doing the same job…Freedom is about making our own decisions about our own bodies."
To be certain, Democrats aren't dominating the war over "freedom."
Republicans still lean hard on patriotism, adorning their rallies and suit jacket lapels with American flags and turning Lee Greenwood's "Proud to be an American" into a conservative hymn. And the party still is able to say it wants more funding for the military than its Democratic foes in Congress, who insist on matching boosts in Pentagon spending with rises in funds for other domestic priorities.
But for Democrats, just being in the fight for one of the most potent symbols in electoral politics is a breath of fresh air.
"I think the narrative has taken some of those words and said that they belong to Republicans, just like, apparently, red trucker hats only belong to Republicans," Roberts, a delegate to the Democratic National Committee and now a Democratic leader in the Kentucky state House, told ABC News. "And we are demanding, no, these are universal words."
