Anatomy of a slogan

And other language lessons from a losing presidential campaign.

“We’re not going back” was Vice President Kamala Harris’s rallying cry.

“We’re Not Going Back” magnet via eBay

When I wrote about “Not Going Back” in July, I acknowledged that its intent was positive. Let’s not return to the bad old days of racism and sexism (had they ever disappeared?). To back-alley abortions. To a tragically bungled pandemic response. To the chaos and vindictiveness of the Trump years.

But the slogan always had a second meaning, right there in plain sight, a promise as well as a warning. And that second meaning proved to be a prediction: We Democrats are not going back to the White House. Donald J. Trump and his enablers are.¹

I thought this slogan was a bad omen. But who am I? Nobody with influence. The Harris campaign considered the slogan a triumph. It was used and repeated and trumpeted.

CNN reported in August that one of Harris’s advisers had counseled her to ditch “We’re not going back” because it wasn’t focused enough on the future: “Harris’ advisers listened. They considered the arguments. They decided to stick with what the crowds were chanting in the arenas.”

Sometimes, though, vox populi is vox wrong.

Not so obviously, obviously. Source.

The “Harris Walz Obviously” slogan was popular, too.

I get the logic. Obviously we wouldn’t want to elect a guy who promises — promises! — to be “a dictator” on Day One of his term. Who says he wants generals like Hitler’s. Who pocketed millions from foreign governments — and never stopped profiting from his private businesses — while he was president. Who’s a convicted sexual abuser. Who lied and lied and lied, and then lied some more.

But can you see how this sort of “obviously” language — which was never, to be fair, an official slogan — comes across as arrogant and sanctimonious? As if anyone who fails to see the obviousness, poor thing, is ignorant and bigoted? (The slogan was easily and inevitably mocked by replacing “obviously” with “obliviously.”)

Shall we compare and contrast? As much as it pains me to say it — because I am obviously not a Trump fan — the Trump campaign did something brilliantly on target with one of its messages. Aiming at Vice President Harris’s support for transgender rights, the ad read “Kamala’s for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

Compare the dismissive use of Harris’s first name with the respectful “President” in front of Trump’s surname. Contrast the pronouns: the implicit mockery of “they/them” — the ungendered choice insisted on by people who reject she and he — and also a way to say “those other guys.” And remember that you has forever been one of the most powerful words in advertising.

I want to look at one other piece of political writing from this election cycle, created not by a candidate or a party but by the New York Times’s editorial board. There’s no headline on the editorial, but the metadata labels it “Vote to End the Trump Era.”

Jason Kottke, a veteran independent blogger I’ve read and admired for many years, wrote approvingly about the editorial: 110 words with 27 hyperlinks. He praised it as “effective” for “its plain language and its information density.”

I disagree.

I’ve linked above to the editorial so you can see how it looked on the Times website. I’m also reproducing it here in its entirety:

You already know Donald Trump. He is unfit to lead. Watch him. Listen to those who know him best. He tried to subvert an election and remains a threat to democracy. He helped overturn Roe, with terrible consequences. Mr. Trump’s corruption and lawlessness go beyond elections: It’s his whole ethos. He lies without limit. If he’s re-elected, the G.O.P. won’t restrain him. Mr. Trump will use the government to go after opponents. He will pursue a cruel policy of mass deportations. He will wreak havoc on the poor, the middle class and employers. Another Trump term will damage the climate, shatter alliances and strengthen autocrats. Americans should demand better. Vote.

Sorry, Jason Kottke. This is not “plain language.” It’s graduate-school language.

Look at the vocabulary: subvert, ethos, alliances, deportations, autocrats. These words are derived from Latin and Greek, which codes them as formal, distant, pretentious. (Remember Winston Churchill’s maxim: “Short words are best, and the old words when short are best of all.” Every one of Churchill’s short old words contains just a single syllable; none comes from Latin or Greek.)

Look at wreak havoc, an expression that is not Classically derived — the words come from Old and Middle English, respectively — but which is so antiquated that it has the same distancing effect.

Look at Roe, which requires the reader to know that it’s shorthand for “Roe v. Wade,” and to know that overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which the U.S. Supreme Court did in 2022, meant taking away a Constitutional right to abortion: the A-word never mentioned here.

“Terrible consequences”? That’s a highfalutin evasion of the real stakes when access to abortion is restricted or denied outright: pain, suffering, sometimes infertility and even death.

As for those hyperlinks, they may be clever or elegant but they also require a lot of effort from the reader. As a result the paragraph, which is meant to motivate, feels more like a homework assignment.

And it’s guaranteed not to change a single mind.

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As I was thinking these language-y post-election thoughts I opened an email sent to the group of women with whom I’d written hundreds of postcards urging people all over the country to register to vote and then to actually vote.

The sender was Jody London, who works on climate issues in her job as sustainability coordinator for a county in the San Francisco Bay Area. With her permission, I’m sharing part of what she wrote:

We have to meet people where they are, and better understand their concerns. I spend a lot of time exhorting my colleagues to use plain language. For example, in my world folks talk about “electrification” and “decarbonization.” My neighbor doesn’t know what that means. I say let’s talk about all-electric buildings, clean energy, and making our homes and neighborhoods more ready for the heat waves, hurricanes, floods, and fires that we all see happening more often.

Is Jody’s neighbor an ignoramus? Nope. I confess that I’m not entirely sure what “electrification” and “decarbonization” mean in real-world terms, and I have a B.A. and most of a graduate degree. Those -ation words are just too abstract to evoke mental pictures.

We talk a lot about political bubbles: communities in which we’re unlikely to encounter a dissenting opinion. We live in language bubbles, too. To bridge divides, we need a common tongue — a lingua franca that’s mutually understandable.

And people who write political speeches and create political slogans need to employ true “plain language” and also to consider the goal of that language. Is it to send winking (or earnest) signals to the “base”? Or is it to extend a welcoming message to the skeptics and on-the-fencers? They need to develop better skills for identifying jargon and in-group talk and better translation skills to create language that stirs the emotions.

Will those language skills “end the Trump era”? Not on their own. But we can’t go forward without them.

1. For the record, although I was a registered Democrat for many years and almost always voted the straight party ticket, I changed my registration last year to No Party Preference, an option in California.