“Is your phone off, Patriot?”
“Are you still a Republican?”
“This is getting SAD!”
“HOW MANY TIMES ARE WE GOING TO HAVE TO ASK?”
The midterm elections are approaching, and political messaging teams are hard at work overwhelming inboxes across America. And while Republicans and Democrats rely heavily on guilt trips to squeeze money out of voters, the language they employ is markedly different – and says a lot about what’s wrong with each of them.
Princeton researchers reviewing more than 100,000 campaign emails from December 2019 to June 2020 found they rose from a peak of about 600 a day in December to twice that in June – and that didn’t include text messages.
But, despite the annoying nature of the communications, they seem to work, perhaps because they are so meticulously crafted. Toby Fallsgraff, email director for the Obama 2012 campaign, explained to NPR how the campaign would test up to 18 versions of a message on certain subscribers before sending it out widely. Emails brought in roughly $500m for the campaign. A few years later, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign asked for money 50 different ways in one month.
So what does all this linguistic fiddling say about the parties behind it? With just a few weeks before voting begins, the Guardian sorted through some of the most memorable messages of the 2022 campaign to shed light on the question.
Republicans
For the GOP, it’s all about unswerving loyalty to the party – and to the great overlord, the chosen one, he who alone can fix it. He is not running for office this year, but his party seems unaware.
Text messages from the Republican National Committee dangle a wide range of perks: donate and you can be a part of the Trump Gold Club, the Trump Advisory Board (he undoubtedly takes direct calls from members), the Trump Free Speech Committee (I was flattered to receive an “EXECUTIVE INVITE” to this one), the 1 Million Trump Social Club, or the America First 100 Club. Failing that, you can become a Trump Social Media Founding Supporter or get on the Trump Life Membership List (the messages do not specify what it would mean to be a lifetime member of Trump). Gifs of the ex-president often adorn the bottom of emails.
And if none of these clubs are for you, beware the RNC’s wrath. “Don’t you care?” asked a message on 30 June. “Our records show your Trump Advisory Board membership status is STILL PENDING ACTIVATION!”
This was just one of many similar messages that arrived after a failure to donate. In February, I was threatened with “possible suspension” – from what, I’m not sure – if I didn’t provide my “$45 payment”. Then in April: “Patriot! YOU NEVER ANSWERED!” (Capitals theirs.)
Later, things got passive-aggressive. “Do we need to talk, friend?” the party wondered. A few weeks after that, in May: “We’re not mad, we’re just asking. Why haven’t you pledged to follow Pres. Trump on Truth Social [his social media platform]?”
All of these, it should be noted, were positively gentle compared with an apparently genuine message that made the rounds on Twitter and in the media a year ago, in line with New York Times reporting in April 2021, describing a “defector” list supposedly maintained by the GOP:
These NRCC fundraising texts are getting intense pic.twitter.com/2Smm3NXCYy
— Andrew Solender (@AndrewSolender) October 14, 2021
But it’s not all accusatory – the party employs flattery as well. In June I learned that I was the party’s “BEST PATRIOT”, despite the delinquent behavior that had so recently forced it to reprimand me. The party’s forgiving nature was on display again in August, when my “strong support” – I had never once donated – “earned … a spot on the 2022 Republican Advisory Board”.
Clearly, the party’s marketing team believes donors are motivated by accusations of insufficient loyalty. In a March email describing the invasion of Ukraine, the party said a poll had found most Democrats would flee the country if the US found itself in a similar position. “So we must ask: Would you fight for your country if it was under attack? Researchers need your response by midnight tonight. If you do not respond in time, we will assume you side with the Democrats who wouldn’t fight for America.”
Those Democrats, of course, are framed as not just opponents but enemies of the people, as in this message in February, when Ketanji Brown Jackson made her way to the supreme court:
“HELP US! Biden’s Radical Supreme Court pick wants to TOTALLY TRAMPLE your right to:
-1st Amnd
-2nd Amnd
-RIGHT TO LIFE.”
I’ll admit, this text did leave me a little concerned about my right to 1st Amnd and wondering what, exactly, the “right to RIGHT TO LIFE” was – was Jackson planning to legalize homicide? Another message was similarly poetic, simply stating:
“T Y R A N T
B I D E N”
Demands for loyalty might seem to contradict the Republicans’ supposed mantra of liberty above all, but George Lakoff, distinguished professor emeritus in cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, says it fits with the conservative worldview.
We operate according to the idea that the nation is a family, and on the right, that family is driven by a “strict father” who “knows right from wrong. What he says should be is always correct, and you should do what he says,” Lakoff said in a phone interview. “The Republican party is an authority-based system. It says, ‘This is how things should be and let’s make them that way.’”
As for the clash between an authoritarian viewpoint and the party’s professed love of freedom, Lakoff says it’s simple: “There are two different views of freedom,” and on the right, freedom “means you are free to use whatever authority you have”.
So perhaps it’s no surprise that so many Republican fundraising messages, short on nuance and written in simple language, sound like a parent chastising a wayward child, while others warn of encroaching enemies. The subtext: donate now – or you’re in deep trouble with Dad.
Democrats
The opposing party is equally inclined to hyperbole, though it often takes a very different tone – one of vulnerability and occasional self-flagellation. “We’re downright BEGGING you,” wailed the subject line from a late September Democratic email. “Election day is 64 days away and we’re getting nervous,” warned a text early last month.
It’s really upsetting to have to send multiple texts and emails every day: “This isn’t easy for me,” wrote Joe Biden in April. A few months later: “I hate to ask.” (If Republicans’ word choice was occasionally odd, Democrats made mistakes of their own – this particular message suggested I “take a moment to read this email, and then chip in $0 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee”, which I did.)
Republicans’ emails weren’t entirely free from vulnerability in messages such as, “If we fall even a dollar short, we will lose the House to Pelosi FOREVER,” which would be pretty remarkable even for Pelosi, a known mortal. But such warnings were still underscored by a sense of menace, while Democrats seem content to appear pitiful: “we’re PLEADING”, “we might miss our goal”, “throwing in the towel”.
When they’re not PLEADING, Democrats, in classic Democratic fashion, struggle to get their message out. While Republicans spit out brief, simple messages, Democrats offer subject lines like this from April: “I hope you’ll read this long email about how the DNC is bringing advanced data infrastructure to thousands of midterm campaigns this year, and then consider chipping in to support that work.” What red-blooded American could resist?
Perhaps working more in the Democrats’ favor, the messages contain a sense of warmth: instead of “Patriot”, the recipient is “Friend”. The word “please” is abundant. And there’s a sense of community: “This is the time to fight for our country with everything we have”, “thinking of this team,” “You power the DNC [Democratic National Committee].”
And in another feature that’s typical of the party more broadly, the Democrats have no trouble hauling out celebrities, from Barbra Streisand to John Legend (all of whom seem to have a remarkably similar writing style). “Matthew, I’m sure that you weren’t expecting to hear from me today,” Martin Sheen texted me, accurately, a few days ago, along with a lovely picture of his own face.
If Republican messaging aligns with Lakoff’s “strict father” worldview, Democrats’ touchy-feely messaging fits his description of the progressive mindset, which he calls “nurturant parent”. That’s the empathetic figure who “isn’t imposing on the child but rather wants to find out what you need”, Lakoff says. “For the Democratic party, democracy is based on empathy. Why would you have a democracy, you know? In order to help other people, to make sure everybody gets treated equally, that everybody gets what they need from the government.”
The “begging” and “pleading”, then, seem to be based on the assumption recipients wish to do good; describing nervousness and sinking hearts appeals to empathy. And Barbra, John and Martin are all just part of the family.
And what would a nurturing family be without guilt trips? Of course, Democratic guilting is more “have you forgotten the parents who worked so hard to raise you?” than the Republicans’ “if you don’t cough up now, you’re dead to me”:
Did I…date Nancy Pelosi and completely forget about it? pic.twitter.com/UVDSr7tCMq
— Megan Collins (@ImMeganCollins) October 1, 2022
As for the more complex language involved in Democratic messages, Lakoff says, “Democrats tend to assume what I call Cartesian rationality: that is that you should be able to reason things out. And they give you reasons for things and then it takes some reasoning to get there. The Republicans tend to just say, ‘This is how it is.’”
Across the divide
Though each party’s tone is very different, there’s plenty that looks just about the same – well beyond the red, white and blue formatting of each email.
Along with weaponizing guilt, both parties make use of what might be described as trickery. The 2020 Princeton study found manipulative tactics in emails were widespread – including “devious” techniques such as formatting emails so they look like they’re part of actual conversations between you and a campaign. Many of the emails I received, seemingly from Democrats in particular, had subject lines that contained “re:”, even though I’d never written to them.
Even more deceptively, I received Republican emails with subject lines such as “Your flight is CANCELED”, with no indication that they were political emails until you opened them – the sender was labeled as “urgent notice”. (In this case, it turned out the email was warning me that I was about to lose access to a proffered dinner with Donald Trump.)
And while definitions of left and right can fluctuate, says Justin Gross, associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, there’s one thing that clearly unites each party: “a distaste for what the other side is doing”. As the pollster and political strategist John Zogby put it in an email: “They both need to hear from me because the sky is falling.”
That fear, Gross says, is “enormously motivating”. “When we feel that anxiety that’s kind of accumulated from a bunch of sources” – the rolling ball of political worries that seems to get bigger every day – “we feel like we don’t know what to do about it”, Gross says. When parties ask for donations, “it’s kind of a channeling of: well, at least you can do this.”
