Concepts, ideas, or phrases that might illuminate a discussion of politics or current affairs. I’ll be on the lookout for additions to the list in 2020.

Blue shift: As “overtime votes” (counted in the days following Election Day) have increased in number, the late-breaking votes tend to be Democratic — so the final results shift toward the Democrats. Edward B. Foley identified this shift in 2013. The shift has become more pronounced in recent cycles and has garnered much more attention in 2020 (when many more millions of mail-in ballots are expected).

Barstool view of the world: ” It’s the kind of thing some guy (always a guy) announces after a beer or six, and it’s always the product of massive ignorance.” (Kevin Drum, rejecting nuance and endorsing a barstool opinion.)

Chaos president: Coined by Jeb Bush; well captured by Ronald Brownstein:

“Chaos president” is how former Florida Governor Jeb Bush described Trump in the final Republican presidential-primary debate of 2015. Bush’s argument against Trump’s erratic leadership style didn’t save his flagging campaign, but his coinage may have been the single most accurate forecast of Trump’s turbulent tenure. Trump’s presidency has been marked by constant turnover in personnel, hairpin turns in policy, angry feuds with politicians in both parties, perpetual Twitter wars, the disregard and disparaging of experts, a torrent of lies and misrepresentations, and the most open appeals to white racial resentment of any other national figure since George Wallace.

Chuck Todd theory of American politics: “The idea that there is this informed, engaged American population that is watching these political events and watching their elected leaders and assessing their behavior and making a judgment.” (Thanks to Rachel Bitecofer, election forecaster profiled by Politico, arguing that swing voters are virtually extinct.)

Emotional support map: a talisman of the POTUS to alleviate his insecurity after losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. Phrase used by Jonathan Chait (“Trump Comforts Himself on Impeachment With Emotional Support Map“). For an alternative representation of the 2016 election results, check out Kenneth Field’s dasymetric dot density map.

Negative partisanship: “This is the tendency to vote for a party not mainly because you like it, but because you are repulsed by the other major party. Democrats vote for their party more because they want to prevent Republicans from winning than because of affection for their party’s candidates, and vice versa” [in Jonathan Ladd’s words]. Alan Abramowitz and Steven Webster, who introduced the concept in 2015, wrote that: 

consistent party loyalty reached its highest levels in half a century in the 2008 and 2012 elections. We believe that this surge in partisan behavior reflects a fundamental change in the nature of partisan identity in the American electorate—the rise of negative partisanship. Negative partisanship develops when the partisan identities of voters are strongly related to other salient social and political characteristics. When this happens, supporters of each party perceive supporters of the opposing party as very different from themselves in terms of their social characteristics and fundamental values. As a result, voters tend to hold very negative opinions of the opposing party’s leaders and supporters, prefer not to associate with those who support the opposing party and are less likely to consider voting for candidates from the opposing party.

Outrage off-ramp: an escape route from responsibility built on rhetorical indignation (generally directed at ones opponents) that offers cover from unwelcome, detrimental facts and provides an alibi to not do the right thing (as prescribed by the facts). This ploy relies on negative polarization and, on the Republican side, is aided and abetted by Fox News Channel. The expression comes courtesy of  Sheldon Whitehouse.

Red mirage: The possibility of a Trump lead on election night that completely disappears after all the votes, including mail-in votes, are counted. Josh Mendelsohn coined the term. The phenomenon of Democrats gaining votes as ballots are counted after Election Day is well-established (see Blue shift above). Although that hardly means that Trump will have a lead even in the early morning hours of November 4, his position relative to Biden, can be expected to shrink as votes continue to be counted.

Shitstorm: a chaotic, troublesome situation. This makes the list because of this fun fact: in Germany, this word (as heard “primarily in American English”) is not regarded as a vulgarity. “It is used by the highest and lowest in the land and when Chancellor Merkel used it at a public meeting, nobody batted an eyelid, our correspondent adds.”

Tit for tat: return in equal measure; retaliation (or, less commonly, cooperation) in kind. I took issue with Nina Totenberg’s (colloquially correct) use of the phrase to describe “the escalating partisan wars over judicial nominations,” because Republicans’ scorched earth tactics are hardly commensurate with any supposed injury they’ve incurred.