Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Dog Whistle Politics

Last night Amy Sullivan said something interesting. I suppose I've heard version of it before but never quite as succintly. Roughly paraphrasing, she said that Republicans speak to their base in code and then yell loudly to more moderate voters, while Democrats tend to to do the opposite.

I wasn't sure how true much this was or if true what it meant, but I've been mulling it over since. I certainly don't see a lot of yelling loudly to the base by most Democrats, though it's probably true that the few Democrats who do "pander" to the base do so loudly and proudly. It's also the case that many in the media equate anything expressed by Democrats in a passionate and strident way as pandering to the base. Democrats internalize this and think that what moderates/independents is bland moderation, which I don't really think is true.

Anyway, random thoughts, open for discussion.