Why Do We Need 23 Deodorant Brands Anyway?

Bernie Sanders seems to be gaining ground as a breakout presidential candidate who could win if he plays all his cards right. It’s going to be tough. He’s not accepting any corporate donations and that’s going to crimp his campaign financially. However, he seems to know how to make effective use of social media if his recent Reddit “Ask Me Anything” is any indication.

Of course, I’ve been idly watching him and actually starting to like the guy. He’s somebody who could really give Hillary Clinton a challenge simply because he doesn’t have all the baggage of Benghazi and the obvious security weaknesses of keeping government-related emails on a personal server. I think he’s already made one minor slip, though. He questioned why we need 23 deodorant brands when there are hungry children in this world. My initial reaction was, “Oookay, obviously he’s never had to cool his heels in a crowded room with no air conditioning and people who don’t use deodorant.” It’s actually kind of a stretch to connect personal hygiene products with hungry children.

My question for Bernie is: Do you ever get sweaty palms when you stand up there in front of an audience and worry about whether something you say might come off the wrong way? How about bad foot odor from bacteria that feed on sweat from your feet? I have a solution for you. It’s called Electro Antiperspirant and you can see a review of this awesome product below. A portion of sales can go to help fight hunger by helping to pay the bills of bloggers like me who are members of its affiliate program.

And yes, I am being snarky. Every bar of deodorant that gets sold is one that helps to keep people in the personal hygiene industry employed and out of the soup kitchens. The fortunate thing about having so many deodorant brands is that you have choices as a consumer. You could even choose none of them and risk being the one person in the room who offends everybody else with bad armpit odor. Or you could come up with your own alternative that isn’t loaded with aluminum and other questionable ingredients. The fact that we don’t stink very much for all that we spend 36% less on personal hygiene products now than we did half a century ago (according to the Washington Post) should tell us something about how much these products have improved. So, obviously, deodorant isn’t the bloodsucker stealing food from hungry children that Sanders makes it out to be.

That’s why free market systems rock. People like to have choices. If the deodorant brand called Suave doesn’t work, you can at least try Secret. I prefer solid bars of deodorant because the roll-on kind has an unfortunate tendency to evaporate by noon. If it gets to the point where there’s only one brand of deodorant available, well, that’s called a monopoly and anybody who has ever been stuck with a choice between Comcast’s service and nothing at all can tell you what happens when there’s a monopoly.

So, Bernie Sanders, if you see this, you may wish to avoid a faux pas like this in the future. No one else is going to follow the logic chain that gets you from deodorant brands to hungry children unless you can explain it. I still think you can win, but you will have to be very careful about what you say and do between now and November 2016. Good luck, pal.