The language experts from maslansky + partners take on the smartest, savviest, and sometimes stupidest messages in the market today. CEO Michael Maslansky and President Lee Carter bring their experience with words, communication, and behavioral science to the table — along with a colleague or client — and offer up a “lay of the language.” Their insight helps make sense of business, life, and culture, and proves over and over again that It’s Not What You Say, It’s What They Hear™.

At its core, good language strategy finds language that motivates people to take action. It’s how business is done and how elections are won. But voters find themselves increasingly focused on more and more issues, and what we like to call “wedge” issues aren’t wedges anymore — they’re make or break issues. In the 2018 election cycle, political messages hinged on the single issue of healthcare. Lee and Michael are joined by Partner Ben Feller to uncover the three main themes that are defining this midterm cycle. And why the message that resonates in each of these themes is usually from the party or candidates playing offense rather than defense.

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LINKS MENTIONED IN THE SHOW

Lee Carter’s book, Persuasion

Michael Maslansky’s book, The Language of Trust

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EPISODE 7 TRANSCRIPT:

Lee Carter:

I know it’s a nuance in what I’m talking about, but it’s a flip. I think it’s really important that instead of thinking the worst days are behind us, that the best days are ahead of us. The party that makes the case that frames up what they’re going to do to make it better is the one that’s going to win.

Michael Maslansky:

They said what? Welcome to HearSay, a podcast from the language strategists at maslansky + partners, where we give our take on the strategy behind the smartest, savviest and stupidest messages in the market today and what you can learn from them. Our philosophy is it’s not what you say, it’s what they hear. And that’s why we call this HearSay. I’m Michael Maslansky, CEO of maslansky + partners and author of The Language of Trust.

Lee Carter:

And I’m Lee Carter, President of maslansky + partners and author of a book called Persuasion. I’m really extra excited about this episode because one of my passions and what led me here in the first place is the impact that language has had on politics and the way that we view the government. So, welcome back to another episode of HearSay, where we’re going to really dig in to the midterms.

In the early days of maslansky + partners, we focused exclusively on politics. Now, much less so. Our work really spans industries and issue areas. But with the midterm elections taking place across the United States today, we’re leveraging our decades worth of experience and political insights to talk about the messages that will make and break the candidacies and the elections. Tonight we’re happy to invite our partner, Ben Feller, back to the podcast. And Ben is no stranger to the world of politics having covered the White House for multiple presidents. Ben, welcome to the show.

Ben Feller:

Hello, Lee. It’s good to be back. I covered the thorniest issues in America as the Chief White House correspondent for the AP, and now I love finding the language that helps our clients solve their own challenges. So interested to dig into politics with both of you.

Michael Maslansky:

All right. Well, we could not do a podcast on language and framing in the middle of an election cycle without talking at least a little bit about how candidates and parties have tried to use their message to deliver the desired outcome from the election. As you both well know, midterm elections are usually pretty predictable in terms of both the outcome in that the sitting president in a first term usually gets whooped, but also in terms of how the election is framed as a referendum on the sitting president. And that’s what we might have expected. But this midterm cycle has turned out to be different for a whole host of reasons. For everybody listening, I’m sure you all have followed the polls. Makes our job a little harder because we know that you know a lot about the election, so we’re going to try and raise ideas and perspectives that you haven’t heard on the 80,000 news shows that you may be watching. We’ll also try and connect those to lessons that communicators can take away and apply to a broader set of situations.

So I’m going to jump in by asking you both to make a prediction. After we get through with the election, if the Democrats outperform expectations, what will we say was the reason that they outperformed? And then we’ll get to if the Republicans either outperform or at least do what’s expected and win, what will the story be about then? Lee, let me start with you.

Lee Carter:

I think if the Democrats outperform expectations, and really they should be losing by a landslide based on the polling that we see out there, but they’re not, and I think the reason would be that Republicans failed to make the case. I think the Republicans have been doing a lot of framing on how bad things are when it comes to the economy, inflation and crime, and not enough on what it is that they’re going to do to make it better. So that’s what would be the story if the Democrats outperform. And if the Republicans outperform, I would say it’s because the Democrats failed to be in touch, which is most important to the American people. And in many cases, we’ll talk about some of the messaging that they’ve used around these issues, but rather than leaning into understanding why it is that Americans feel the way they feel about inflation and crime, they’re rather defensive of it and saying, “It’s not as bad as you say it is.” And I think that could be a big miss for them.

Michael Maslansky:

Ben, what about you? What do you think we’ll be saying next week?

Ben Feller:

I think if the Democrats outperform expectations, it will show that there was a quiet durability, a surprising durability to their message framing around economic progress, which President Biden has talked about a lot in pointing to policies and laws that have passed. But those things have not felt very personal yet to voters in the polling. So if they win, we’ll show that those did sink in. And also maybe this message that the Democrats have had, true since the attack on the Capitol, that there’s a return of sanity to government under President Biden. So if they win, maybe those things will have been the reason.

As far as the Republicans, if they not only perform as the polling shows but exceed expectations, I think it’s because they really did capture the economic anxiety about inflation that Lee referenced. Then they’ll own it for the last two years of Biden’s term and we’ll see what they do with that, if there’ll be a party of opposition or try to get things done. But to me that’s what that message would be.

Michael Maslansky:

Amazing. All right. Well I’m not going to add to that because I think you’ve nailed the big points. But as we’ve talked about, there’s so much going on in this midterm cycle in terms of how the parties have tried to frame the election and the candidates have tried to frame the election in individual races. We’re going to talk about a couple of them. I want to start at a high level, thinking about nationalizing the election. What I would put in theme one is the, it’s the economy stupid versus it’s the democracy stupid theme of the election, where we know that the Republicans want to make this about Biden and the economy, and the more that we are talking about the economy and inflation, they assume that they’re going to be winning. The Democrats want to make this all about the former president and January 6th.

And not only has each tried to make their case on that front, but they’ve also had to defend themselves. So there are a couple of different issues baked into that. But overall, Lee, talk to me about who you think has done a better job in winning the national debate and what stood out to you.

Lee Carter:

So, a couple of things. I think that the national debate right now is really being defined by pocketbook issues. And this isn’t new, this is what everybody says going back as far as I can remember in political analysis. Bill Clinton famously used to say, “I feel your pain,” and that’s something that the Americans really resonated with. What the Democrats have done about inflation, and whether you’re talking about Senator Schumer or Joe Biden, is said, “Look, it’s really not as bad as you think it is. It’s temporary.” When Senator Schumer announced the Inflation Reduction Act, he said, “The verdict is in. Our bill is already creating new investments, new jobs, new opportunities for American families, jobs here in America, not overseas.” Now, why do I think this is a problem for Democrats? When you have nine and 10 Americans saying they feel worse about the economy today than they did just three months ago and you have a party going out there and saying, “Hey, let’s celebrate. Great things are happening,” I think it makes them feel really, really tone deaf.

But the other problem is on the other side of the aisle, the Republicans haven’t done a great job making their case. They’ve gone out there and talked about how bad it is. Just think about, are you worse off today than you were two years ago? And most people would say yes, but the question keeps coming up, what are you going to do differently? Now recently, Kevin McCarthy has introduced something a little bit new, which is the commitment to America, sounds very similar to the contract for America from all those years ago, that is presenting a case on what Republicans are going to do if they’re put in office. I think it’s really smart, but it’s not getting any traction.

One of the things that we say all the time in messaging that is so key is that it gets repeated over and over and over again. In this message of the commitment to America, they talk about four different things: an economy that’s strong, a nation that’s safe, a future that’s built on freedom, a government that’s accountable. That’s not getting repeated. When you look at candidate after candidate, interview after interview with congressmen and senators on the news, they’re talking about how bad things are, not how good things could be if this commitment to America were to be put in place. So it’s really interesting to watch, and in both cases, I think it’s a big miss both on the Democrats and the Republicans side.

Michael Maslansky:

Ben, what do you think?

Ben Feller:

The other frame that you mentioned was, it’s the democracy stupid. And I think there’s a parallel to what Lee said happening with the Democrats. The question is, are you better off than you were two years ago? On that front, the answer for voters should be a resounding yes. That there’s a calmer sense. There’s not tweets coming up from the president at 2:00 in the morning. The sense of constant chaos from government, from politics is gone. They’re trying to send a signal through their framing that there is a fundamental extremist threat to our way of life and our government, and it’s coming from the guys on the other side. It’s not just President Trump who’s sitting on the sidelines. It’s the people who are running for office and what they plan to do with that fervor, if they win again, both in overturning laws, fomenting the sense of election distress, but also maybe even a sense of political violence in the country.

So they are wondering why is that not taking hold? And I think it goes to this issue that Lee said, that it’s a message that they’re not feeling in their daily life.

Ben Feller:

The pillars of government, institutional faith, institutional trust, these are truly important, and they’re more lasting as a concern than inflation, which does go up and down. But in an election cycle, people tend to think in very short terms. How am I feeling right now? How am I doing right now? And I think in that sense, the Democrats have had a harder time capitalizing on that feeling.

Lee Carter:

It’s really evidenced when you see President Obama going back out right now, and his key message seems to be democracy is on the ballot. He used that a few years ago, but that’s what he’s putting out there. And when we test this kind of messaging with voters, it’s very mushy. What does that mean exactly? There are people who feel it in their states, there are certainly people who have been afraid or have those feelings, but it’s almost preaching to the choir. I don’t think it’s going to convert people who are in the middle right now.

Michael Maslansky:

Yeah, it’s the big missed messaging opportunity of this cycle for Democrats. And there are a couple of things that they didn’t do that arguably they could have done that would’ve made a difference. When they were talking about voting rights, they were closer to the mark on the risk to democracy when your vote was being taken away, because that was no longer as salient as people digested the changes to early voting and didn’t resonate quite as much anymore. And so they moved on to this broader idea and trying to make it about January 6th. Then the problem is that we really don’t know what it means that democracy is on the ballot, and we really don’t yet know what the world would feel like if democracy were taken away. If I were advising them, which I have not been, I would’ve advised them to get up on every debate stage and in every ad, and to make a pledge to respect the election and to say, “I respect the election. Will my opponent respect the election? Will they sign the pledge? There are a couple pledges out there.”

But it would’ve forced Republicans to say that they will honor the results of the election, in which case maybe they don’t make as much [inaudible] on the issue. But I’m not sure that the former president would’ve allowed them to take that pledge because it would’ve suggested something about the last election not being fraudulent, and that would’ve really hit home that you’ve got a bunch of candidates who are explicitly saying, not that they don’t believe the outcome of the last election, but that they don’t commit to respecting the outcome of this election. That that could have proven to be a significant wedge.

Lee Carter:

So, I do agree with you, Michael, that making it more tangible would be much more powerful than what they’ve done, but I want to play devil’s advocate on that because this is very much the issue that Democrats made two years ago. Democracy is on the ballot. This is all about decency, sanity to politics. And two years later, Democrats have had the House, they’ve had the Senate, they’ve had the White House, and people feel worse today than they did before, not just about economic policy, but also about the future of America and how optimistic they are about their children.

This, to me, is about something that’s much bigger than democracy. This is about hope in our future. And by making it framed in the negative, which is by saying pledge to make every vote count or democracy is on the ballot, that’s very negative fear-based framing, rather than saying we’re going to restore hope in America by doing these few things. I know it’s a nuance in what I’m talking about, but it’s a flip. I think it’s really important, that instead of thinking the worst days are behind us, that the best days are ahead of us. The party that makes the case that frames up what they’re going to do to make it better is the one that’s going to win.

Michael Maslansky:

I think you’re absolutely right in terms of the positive framing, and I think the idea of putting it in a positive light is a much better way to do it. We always see that framing things in the positive is a more effective way to bring people together, and the negative messaging tends to divide. Positive messaging brings people together the idea of weaving that into a positive message about how we get to a future. You certainly could say that the only way to do that is if we can agree on who’s been elected. And so we have to start with a foundation of saying, “What do we need to do in order to respect what is fundamental to being an American, which is the vote? Let’s do it. Let’s all sign up, and then we can move forward.”

Lee Carter:

And here’s the thing that is probably unfair towards Democrats, but it is a reality that we live with, is that Democrats are viewed, by many, as condescending and as superior. And by focusing on the folks who deny the election results or question the election results, and you have to look at that polling very carefully, what ends up happening is people get defensive, and then they get mobilized. So, when you start to focus on these things, like saying, “Majority of Americans reject the election results,” what you end up getting is making people really defensive and almost entrenched in what they may or may not believe.

And we saw it when Hillary called Americans a basket full of deplorables in 2016. We see it when Biden talks about extremist MAGA politics, and you see it when we talk about election deniers. A lot of people want to distance themselves say, “That’s not fair. I’m not that label,” and it backfires. And so while it might be technically true, we often say the facts don’t set you free. I don’t think that this line of messaging and this line of argument helps the Democrats in any way with the people that they need to reach.

Ben Feller:

There’s a timing issue to this as well. Part of what’s happening here is that people have moved on perhaps faster than the people running office have accounted for. So, even though January 6th doesn’t seem that long ago, and the Trump presidency wasn’t that long ago, I think a lot of times voters have moved on and they’re not interested in hearing about the threat to voting rights because they don’t feel it as acutely as they did two years ago. It’s perhaps astonishing how little we’re talking about COVID and the pandemic when that was so dominant on voters’ minds just two years ago. There’s a sense of fatigue and people have said, “Well, I’m worried now, in November, about these issues around the economy. And even though the threats to democracy and voting rights are still real issues, they aren’t necessarily the issues that are animating my vote and my thinking.” So, it does matter, but it may not matter right now, so catch up. Catch up with your framing.

Michael Maslansky:

Yeah, no, I think both are great points. Let’s move to the next theme, which I would consider below inflation and the economy are the two wedge issues of the election, which are abortion and crime. And both have always been highly polarizing issues. There’s a ton of coded language baked into both issues. There’s a ton of history around politics of both issues. They’re also two issues that we would not necessarily have predicted would be on the ballot if we were talking about the midterms a year ago. We know why abortion shot to the top of the list. But if we think about that debate and how it’s played out, Ben, why don’t we start with you. What has stood out to you about the framing of this issue, and who’s winning on it?

Ben Feller:

The Democrats, to me, have another missed opportunity here. There’s something in the way that they’re framing this issue that does not capture the fervor and the zeal and the shock that pro-choice women and men felt at the time that the Supreme Court decision came down. You would’ve thought, again, not that long ago, that they could have held that up and said, “See, this is what we mean. Trump appointed right-leaning justices, and this is the direction of our government.” That is not an abstraction. That was a signature generational supreme court ruling, and it just doesn’t seem to have the galvanizing energy and a diffuse agenda in a midterm that’s hard to get people galvanized without a real face behind it like a presidential would have. That’s an issue that you would think that they would’ve done a better job at.

Lee Carter:

And this is going to be one of those things that we’re not going to know until we’re looking at polls to see how many women go out and vote, because there’s been polling that say that something like two-thirds of women would make this the primary reason that they would go out and vote in a midterm election where a lot of people don’t usually go out to vote. And you’ve seen that independent women polling shift back and forth, based in large part on how much focus there is in the news and in the media about this very issue. When Democrats have made this issue about women’s rights, about equality, they have really started to surge in the polls. There’s been a couple of missteps that they’ve made. Both Lieutenant Governor Barnes and Stacy Abrams tried to make a link between abortion and the financial situation we’re in. So, saying, “The economy’s so bad, inflation’s so bad, and now we’re going to force women to have babies-

Lee Carter:

Now we’re going to force women to have babies, and I think that made people somewhat angry. When Republicans start framing the abortion debate in the extremes, they start to win people over because it’s a calculus issue again. This is an incredibly emotional and complicated issue, and both sides are talking over each other. For Democrats, this is about women’s rights, and for Republicans, this is about state’s rights and babies’ rights, or unborn babies rights, depending on how you define it. There’s just this talking over each other, and no real shift in what people believe, except for how much of a priority someone is going to put on this issue over something else. So when the Democrats make women’s rights equality on the ballot, and a woman is making a decision about what’s more important, is it more important that my daughter has the ability to make a choice with her own body, or is it more important that I pay more at the pump, that’s going to be a decision that they can make much more readily than democracy is on the ballot.

Michael Maslansky:

Yeah, I agree with all that. I think I would say that this is a winning issue for Democrats, that the Republican win in the Supreme Court turned out to what could have been a really, and still may prove to be a really motivating force at the ballot. We certainly saw it in the special elections and in the referendum in Kansas. Some of it will depend on what’s happening at the state level in terms of getting people out to vote on this initially, but just as we talk about the framing of this and where we think that there were missed opportunities, going back to Bill Clinton, he talked about abortion being safe, legal, and rare, and there was a certain kind of respect for the other side, and I think that sense of compassion, regardless of what you believe, is really important.

There are unfortunately so many terrible stories about women’s health and about women’s inability to protect their own health, and when they were highlighting those stories and the very real tragedies that are happening, they were very much demonstrating what’s at stake here. And they seemed to have walked away from that. I don’t know if it got to be too many stories and the media stopped covering it, or they stopped thinking that they needed to tell those individual stories. But it’s not a financial issue, it’s the outcome that is the problem, that people actually couldn’t get to the care that they needed to protect their health. That really resonated. And as Democrats have a tendency to do, is they tend to go to the edge on an issue, and I think that that has hurt them.

Lee Carter:

Yeah. Michael, I think talking about those stories is really important, because the emotional engagement of those stories brings us all together. We can join together in horror of a young person who was raped. We can join together in horror of somebody who can’t get an abortion, even if her life is at risk. Those kinds of unifying moments are what’s most important in this kind of debate, rather than a lot of the arguments which really divide us and put judgment on the other. We come together through stories. We see that in all of our work. That, I absolutely agree with you, is a huge miss for Democrats, and not really bringing those stories home over and over and over again.

Michael Maslansky:

So the flip side from a wedge issue perspective is how crime has played out, where it was not really on the radar a year ago, and all of a sudden has really been elevated. It is certainly not uncommon for Republicans to use some facet of the crime issue to their advantage, and they certainly have made it such that there are at least two governor’s races that are up for grabs, or at least more contested than they would’ve been based on crime. Lee, what’s happening on the crime front?

Lee Carter:

Well, the crime debate is a fascinating debate, because if you ask Americans, no matter their political ideology, if they feel safer today than they did a few years ago, the answer is no. People know that crime is on the rise. You can debate what kind of crime it is, but no matter the case, people feel less safe. And so you look at a state like New York where you can’t even imagine that a Republican would be coming close to a Democrat in the governor’s race, and that’s exactly what’s happening. This is another issue where I think that Democrats are turning a deaf ear to the real issue. So if you think about what Kathy Hochul’s saying in New York, she’s claiming that the crime ahead of the midterms is a conspiracy. She’s calling Lee Zeldin and her opponents data deniers. She’s really just digging into this idea that it’s not real, that Republicans are manufacturing this crime fear mongering, and it’s not true.

Now, we would tell anyone that you never win a debate by telling somebody that they’re wrong or they’re a liar, and that’s what she’s trying to do. Zeldin meanwhile is trying to talk about how we need to make our streets safe again. He’s out there saying, “I’m running to take back our streets and to support unapologetically our men and women in law enforcement.” He’s really talking about what he’s going to do to address it. And I think that you’re looking at a race where it shouldn’t be close, and it’s close because Lee Zeldin is really dealing with an issue that’s very important to New Yorkers.

And similar things are happening in Oregon where Democrats are talking about Republicans are weaponizing crime statistics, rather than talking about what they’re going to do about it. Now, Republicans have done, for a long time, we’ve seen this crime in Democrat-run cities and all of that, and it’s likely unfair in many ways, but I think Democrats are taking the bait, and they’re reacting to Republicans, saying, you’re a liar, this isn’t true, it’s not that bad, rather than setting the course for themselves. It’s just a big miss.

Michael Maslansky:

Ben, other than changing the subject, is there a way for them to push back on the crime issue in a way that that works?

Ben Feller:

No, I think there is a way, but you have to honor something we talk about a lot, which is the personalization of the issue. If you’re having a debate about the legitimacy of the statistics, which may be a fair debate, but it doesn’t speak to the person who’s worried about crime and how he or she feels every day. And so if you feel in your daily life, just to pick an example here in New York where we live, that things are not as safe as they used to be, it doesn’t matter to you what the reported crime statistics for the last two quarters show, what matters to you is do you have somebody who’s running for office that says, I get what you’re saying, and if you now are riding the subway or turning the corner at night and feeling differently than you did, I better do something about that and I better start now, especially if I’ve already won and I’m seeking another term.

And so let’s talk about the framing of how you feel and what we can do about that, and working in your community to make it better. And by the way, here’s what I’ve been doing, and here’s what my opponent would do if he or she was elected, and then you could turn it. And that entire framing has nothing to do with the statistics. That’s where the people, particularly those who are incumbents, lose sight of the personalization, because they have so much data and so many fact patterns, that their answers start to frame that way, and it just doesn’t feel right to the voter, and to Lee’s point, they feel dismissed. That’s not to say that every voter is thinking on an emotional level and a gut level everyday about their subway ride. They do care at some level, some do, about some objectivity, but if your entire argument is about whether or not the stats are legitimate or not, you’ve lost people.

Michael Maslansky:

This raises the fundamental tension that we see so often, which is the debate between the stories and the data. And the stories, Lee, as you just said, always win. Even Fetterman in Pennsylvania dealing with crime, if you’re debating the statistics, you’re going to lose on the issue. And so how else can you demonstrate that you have a better plan, that you have a better understanding, that you have greater empathy for the people who are either anxious about crime or have felt the results?

Lee Carter:

I will say too, in testing a number of these different messages on crime, there was a moment when Fetterman actually talked about how he ran as mayor, and what happened in his city, and what he would do differently to keep people safe. And it was one of the strongest messages that I saw from a Democrat outside of something that Mark Kelly talked about, where he actually acknowledged problems within his own party. There’s just something really powerful about leaning into what people don’t expect you to. And so rather than being on the defensive and saying, it’s not Democrat-run cities, it’s not this, it’s not that, he talked about, this is what happened in my city, and here’s what I’ll do for you to make you safer. And I think that is where the Democrats need to play. Now, they might have some bad statistics, but they can pivot. And what we always tell our clients when they’re in crisis, when they’re dealing with some of these hard issues, is you’ve got to acknowledge that concern. You have to. You cannot pass go until you acknowledge that people feel unsafe. If you simply dismiss them…

Lee Carter:

Until you acknowledge that people feel unsafe. If you simply dismiss them, they will reject you.

Michael Maslansky:

Totally agree with that. And on this point on disruption, I’m going to connect it to our final theme, which is the fact that we’ve got a couple of races in the Senate that are in play that we wouldn’t have necessarily expected to be in play. Part of it’s based on the candidates themselves and how it’s played out, but really crisis communication has become central to a number of these races in Pennsylvania. Crises on both sides, where you had Fetterman having a stroke right before the primary, where you’ve had Oz kind of walk himself into jail, effectively, a whole bunch of times and then try and respond his way out. In Georgia, you’ve got Herschel Walker, who it seems like no matter how many crises get thrown his way, he responds. What do you think we’re seeing here, in terms of how these candidates have responded to their situations from a crisis perspective?

Lee Carter:

Well, I think this is one of the fascinating things about this election cycle, which to me is usually, going into the midterms we talked about earlier, you have a sense for what’s going to happen, right? Because there’s a tide that’s going one way or the other. But we have, in the Senate, a virtual dead heat in the polls, and it’s going to come down to these three or four or five races that are defined really not by an issue, but rather a crisis.

If you look at Pennsylvania, Dr. Oz was positioned as a carpet bagger from New Jersey who was a celebrity nothing, right, and was really getting pounced. And then it got turned into this focus on Fetterman’s health. And the way that Dr. Oz played that was fascinating because when he made his first attack, he said, “I have tremendous empathy for John Fetterman’s struggle with the stroke, but he hasn’t told me or anybody else the details.” And then he goes into his attack. But he starts out by saying, “I have tremendous empathy.” And he introduces these facts not by saying it’s a total attack. And I think that’s part of the reason why he almost was able to do it without it seeming totally gross, even though many people might still think it is totally gross. And I don’t think that Fetterman has properly handled the reaction to it, understanding that people have very real concerns about his ability to respond to questioning in the oral format.

Michael Maslansky:

Ben?

Ben Feller:

There’s something surprising to me, as a former political journalist, about the lack of impact of these crises. Particularly I’m thinking of the sustained battery with Herschel Walker in Georgia. This race could go either way. How is that possible? These are the kinds of things that, in our lifetime, would have sunk a candidate. Because at some point, the voters would’ve said, “I just can’t see going for somebody who is going through that, or it seems duplicitous, it seemed dishonest.”

But there’s almost this callous that has built up around voters that they think, “You know what? It’s down to these two. That just doesn’t really impact me as much anymore. Let’s see how this goes. I’m more likely to go with the one from my party.” And this entire race we’re talking about democracy, inflation, the direction of the country, trust. It could, once again, come down to these two or three states in the Senate, and that will determine the rest of Biden’s term, whether or not he runs again. Right? Whether anything gets done. And it’s just interesting to me that the crisis response sometimes has now shifted to this tolerance among voters.

Michael Maslansky:

Yeah, it’s one of the most depressing aspects of politics today, to me, is this question of have we entered into a post-crisis era for candidates where they follow the Trump playbook and just deny or reject, sidestep, counter, whatever it is. And all of a sudden, really, we are just in deep tribal territory where people pick their side and there are very few people who are willing to sway from one side to the other.

And, for us, where we’ve often tried to help companies navigate these difficult situations by acknowledging the way the public feels and saying that it’s really important to acknowledge that and to demonstrate how you hear their concerns and what actions you’re taking. And politics used to be, to a certain extent, a model for it. It is not anymore because I don’t think that companies can really get away with the same things that politicians can get away with. And you’re seeing just this huge divergence in that.

Lee Carter:

Yeah, we often tell clients that with every crisis comes an opportunity. If you look across these crises, you would actually see some big opportunities to change narratives that are tough in this country.

So instead of a popcorn round, this time, we had our predictions earlier in the show. Thanks so much, Ben, for joining us today, and for all of our listeners. For more language insights and to be in a loop on all of other fun stuff we’re doing, follow us on LinkedIn at maslansky + partners and join our mailing list at maslansky.com/connect. That’s all for now. Join us next time on HearSay, because when it comes to truly effective communications, it’s not what you say, it’s what they hear.