American Political Jargon

The grass roots are at war with astroturf. Yellow Dog Democrats become boll weevils and then Blue Dogs. Beltway bandits troll Pennsylvania Avenue in search of earmarks and extenders. Say what? Every subculture has its lingo, but few add secret code faster than the American political class. It coins words and phrases that slice citizens into microcategories, massages language to exploit or temper passions and slings slang to play inside baseball in the corridors of power. Political jargon is mystifying for a reason. For instance, politicians shrink from frank appeals to white voters, but they’re happy to seek support from Joe Sixpack, soccer moms and small-town Americans. When you hear political code words from talking heads it usually means they’re discussing the horse race rather than the issues.

Once the use of political jargon was confined to men in smoke-filled rooms. In today’s 24-hour political news cycle, commentators want to sound like insiders. So these catchphrases (many defined below) are tossed out to the public as soon as they’re invented, with presidential election years providing bumper crops of fresh slang. Pollsters identify voter demographic groups with phrases like NASCAR dads and Wal-Mart moms. Reporters wonder whether a certain candidate has a lane. Commentators go on news programs to do TV hits and slap scoffing nicknames like birther and tree hugger on people whose beliefs don’t match their own. Derogatory terms are also partisan: Conservatives favor hack as an insult for liberals, while liberals use extremist with conservatives. Some catch-phrases reduce a complex idea to a few words. Take dog-whistle politics. That’s the art of rousing one segment of the electorate without waking others (think of shrill tones that canines hear and humans don’t).