Rabbithorsing

Say it once? I'll make people think you say it all the time.

Politicians have learned over the years to be very careful with the words they use. They’re aware they’re always recorded. Their communications teams have exploded in size and function, and – particularly at national levels – audiences are identified, phrasings are focus tested, delivery is rehearsed.

With less opportunity to amplify errors, a tactic has sprung up where politicians and parties use their channels and their ad budgets to manipulate the public’s sense of how often their opponent brings up a topic. While it doesn’t distort a politician’s words, it does distort a voter’s perception of the target politician’s priorities, and leaves those targets open to criticism that they are woefully out of touch.

This is not the same as a politician saying something stupid and their opponent broadcasting it everywhere.

This is a politician saying something reasonable, but then their opponent broadcasting it everywhere to create a sense they won’t shut up about it.

LET’S TALK ABOUT KAMALA HARRIS

Consider this Donald Trump ad declaring that Trump was for “you”, and Harris was for “they/them”.

Donald Trump wanted voters to think “Here we are, in the middle of an inflationary crisis, and Harris is focusing on what, exactly?”

And what percent of the Kamala Harris campaign do you think was dedicated to transgender issues?

• She mentioned transgender people or rights zero times in the Presidential debate.

• No major Democratic ad campaign focused on transgender issues.

• In the 91-page Democratic Party platform, “transgender” shows up only in the two-page section on LGBTQI+ rights.

The word transgender appears eight times in the 43,000 word platform. For contrast, the word affordability shows up 53 times, infrastructure 43, education 45, freedom 35, military 59, border 49, safety 42, police 27, crime 16, and energy 99.

But I would be willing to bet more than a few of you thought one of the ways the Harris campaign erred is they wouldn’t stop pushing issues Americans didn’t care about, wouldn’t focus on the issues that matter. And you might have thought about “woke” policies and transgender issues as a specific example.

So if the data doesn’t back that up, why might we think that?

Well, one of the Presidential candidates did bring up transgender issues in the debate: Donald Trump. 10% of the Republican platform promises were dedicated to “gender indoctrination” or “left wing gender insanity”. And, most importantly, the Trump campaign and associated political action committees spent tens of millions pushing the idea that Harris wouldn’t shut up about the issue.

YOUR OPPONENTS CONTROL YOUR VOLUME

Speech is not just about what you say, it’s about how often you say it. Campaigns have learned that they also have a hand on their rival’s volume knob.

In Darrell Huff’s 1954 classic “How to Lie With Statistics”, readers learn how not to fall for the statistical tricks used by salespeople, pundits and politicians to manipulate data and create inaccurate sense of reality.

One of Huff’s lessons has to do with the roadside merchant “who was asked to explain how he could sell rabbit sandwiches so cheap.”

“Well”, he said, “I have to put in some horse meat too. But I mix ‘em fifty-fifty: one horse, one rabbit.”

Not every utterance by a politician shows equal interest or equal focus, but any utterance made now risks being blown up in a way that suggests it carries an outsized amount of mindshare.

Modern campaigns don’t just play with their opponents words, they playing with our perception of how often they’re used, the size of the politician’s interest in the issue.

They want you to think their opponent cares about issues you don’t, at the expense of issues you do. They make the rabbit seem equivalent to the horse.

Pundits, journalists and voters need to be alert to this rabbit-horsing, and keep in mind that just because somebody says a politician spends a lot of time on an issue doesn’t mean they do.

Until that realization sets in, politicians need to be aware that any comment they make can be blown up to look like it’s every second comment. Modern message discipline means not just staying on message, but avoiding comment altogether on certain matters.