Donald Trump didn’t repeat the mantra “Drain the Swamp” in his victory speech early Wednesday morning, but the metaphor may have played a small role in helping him to win the 2016 presidential election. It started with a press release on October 17th. Trump vowed to “Drain the swamp in Washington, D.C.” Trump nearly discarded the line on the campaign trail. “Drain the swamp sounded so hokey, I didn’t want to do it. But I did it for one group, and it killed,” he explained.
Drain the swamp is a visceral metaphor which has been used by politicians to signal that it’s time to clean up government corruption. Those three simple words turned into a rallying cry for the millions of disaffected voters who feel as though the established political leaders and institutions have failed them. Trump frequently used metaphors to argue that “the system is rigged,” imploring voters to “take our country back” or to “shake off the rust.”
“Trump has garnered many supporters who are drawn precisely to his message,” according to Georgetown University Linguist Jennifer Sclafani. The metaphors, says Sclafani, “give the impression that he is having an intimate conversation with individual voters rather than giving a prepared speech to a mass audience. This off-the-cuff, unrehearsed style also gives the impression that Trump is speaking for himself and not from a speechwriter’s script which contributes to what his supporters describe as his ‘authentic,’ ‘trustworthy,’ and ‘relatable’ character.”
It can be argued that another metaphor also provoked Trump’s core voters. In September Hillary Clinton said, “…you could put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.” Although she quickly apologized for her “regretful” metaphor, the damage had been done and Trump used it to fuel the resentment his supporters were feeling.
“In the mouths of politicians, metaphor subtly nudges public opinion,” writes author James Geary. In Geary’s TED talk on metaphorical thinking, he said we utter about six metaphors a minute. “Metaphorical thinking is essential to how we understand ourselves and others, how we communicate, learn, discover and invent.”
Throughout history metaphors have been used as powerful tools in political rhetoric. For all their differences, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have shared a fondness for metaphorical language in their speeches. In the first speeches after the election results we heard the following (metaphors are in italics):
Trump victory speech: “Now it’s time for America to bind the wounds of division.” A country cannot ‘bind’ its own wounds, but it is a metaphorical promise that many voters hope Trump will keep to ‘heal’ a divided nation.
Clinton concession speech: “Now, I know we have still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling, but someday someone will — and hopefully sooner than we might think right now.” The glass ceiling metaphor is a popular theme representing an invisible barrier for women in the workplace. It’s so effective it has its own Wikipedia page.
Barack Obama’s remarks on election: “We have to remember that we’re actually all on one team. This is an intramural scrimmage. We’re not Democrats first. We’re not Republicans first. We are Americans first. We’re patriots first…That’s the way politics works sometimes. We try really hard to persuade people that we’re right and then people vote. And then if we lose, we learn from our mistakes, we do some reflection, we lick our wounds, we brush ourselves off, we get back in the arena, we go at it. We try even harder the next time… I’ve said before, I think of this job as being a relay runner. You take the baton, you run your best race and hopefully by the time you hand it off, you’re a little further ahead, you’ve made a little progress. And I can say that we’ve done that and I want to make sure that handoff is well executed because ultimately we’re all on the same team.”
Metaphor will always play a role in political rhetoric because, as James Geary writes, “Once metaphor has us in its grasp, it never lets us go, and we can never forget it.” And the 2016 president election is one that will never be forgotten.