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5 | Dead Money, Dog Whistles,and Droppin’ the G’s
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★ 129 5 Dead Money, Dog Whistles, and Droppin’ the G’s The Lingo of Campaigns and Elections Know your caucuses from your primaries? Your superdelegates from your super PACs? If you got this right, and can differentiate between a funder and a finance event, you’re plugged into the bewildering lingo of American elections. Political campaigns have a jargon all their own. In a sense, it’s not surprising or unique. Health-care-supply salespeople have their own specialized terms to discuss their wares with doctors and hospital administrators. The military has so many acronyms that the Pentagon publishes a 489-page guide.1 Steve Martin used to tell a joke aimed at the plumbers he thought were in his audience using (made-up) insider-ish terms: “This lawn supervisor was out on a sprinkler-maintenance job, and he started working on a Findlay sprinkler head with a Langstrom seven-inch gangly wrench.” When the rest of the bit would fall flat, he would pause, look pained, then ask, “Were those plumbers supposed to be here this show?”2 Still, campaign pros often speak in what seems like an indecipherable patois. Crosstabs, grasstops, and GOTV are just a few of the terms that get uttered frequently in campaign planning sessions —and sometimes make their way into public discourse. Reporters and bloggers pick up and spread them, along with terms such as grassroots and dog whistle. Knowing the meanings of such specialized political terms can help cut through spin meant to obscure what’s really going on in a campaign. When politicians use the cliché, “The only poll that counts is the one on Election Day,” they really mean, “I wouldn’t win if the election were held today.” Or when an office seeker says, 130 ★ Dog Whistles, Walk-Backs & Washington hanDshakes “‘I don’t want to go negative,’” it means he or she is preparing to go negative. Terms uttered frequently and repeatedly aren’t used by accident . Republican consultant Brian Donahue says framing, through specific terms, is key to winning over voters. Changing just a word or two in a campaign can be the difference between winning and losing, says Donahue, a founder and partner of Washington, D.C.–based CRAFT Media/Digital. Donahue likens it to two single women sitting at a bar, seemingly available. One guy who comes over seems rather cocky. That’s not necessarily good, but the gals can live with it and get past it. Another guy comes over who oozes creepiness. Game over for him. “Both are negative, but creepy means something so much deeper, putting you at greater unease. Similarly in politics words have an incredible impact on how people think and feel,” said Donahue, who, among other achievements, managed the 2004 Bush-Cheney reelection victory in West Virginia. He notes that on the right, “freedom” is a staple of successful campaign vocabulary. On the left, it’s “justice.” “Both parties have always fed off those terms and principles. The way parties lose is when parties lose control of those principles. That allows opponents to then define them.”3 Astroturfing: Masking rich sponsors of a political message to make it appear as if it’s coming from a grassroots participant. The common format is for such groups to take innocuoussounding names with whom no one could quibble, such as “Americans” (or “Citizens,” or “People”) for [insert issue here, whether it’s “Clean Energy,” “Fairness” or “Safe Streets”]. ★ Senator Lloyd Bentsen coined the phrase in 1985, in response to an influx of mailers promoting insurance company interests in his state. “A fellow from Texas can tell the difference between grassroots and Astroturf,” the longtime Texas senator—and 1988 Democratic vice presidential nominee—said at the time.4 It’s a common tactic to tie a point of view you’re fighting [18.208.203.36] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 09:43 GMT) ★ 131 The Lingo of Campaigns and eLeCTions against to alleged Astroturf efforts. Early tea party critics, in 2009 and 2010, often drew a direct line between the limitedgovernment groups, many of which did rise organically, and past Democratic foes. They included 1990s-era pro-tobacco groups who fought proposed Clinton administration cigarette tax proposals , along with the Environmental Protection Agency’s findings regarding the dangers of secondhand smoke. But Democratic-aligned groups are just as capable of creating supposedly grassroots campaigns that aren’t exactly upfront about financial backers. Creating stealth lobbying campaigns, known as grass-tops, is a technique...