This BBC Podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. The BBC sees the universe, told by the people who made it happen. "Lift off of the space shuttle Endeavour on an ambitious mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope." "All of those steps which I've done a bunch of times in the water, now they're for real." This is 30 minutes, travel with Hubble from the BBC World Service. Listen now, wherever you get your BBC Podcasts. This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Celie Hatton, and today we're teaming up with our colleagues at America's for a special joint episode. The US midterms aren't far away, and that means a lot of political jargon is getting tossed around. Words like "purple state", "superpack" and "jerrymandering". We've asked you, our audience, to submit questions about some of the terms that have you confused. "Fill a buster, stomp speech." "Superpack, A-pack." "Inside, it bouts way." To help me decode the jargon, I'm joined by Anthony Zerker and Sumi Somaskanda from the BBC's US News and Politics Podcast America. They're going to answer all your questions, and at the end we're even going to do a quick fire round, so wait for that. Also, on hand is our word expert, the etymologist Martha Barnett. And I co-host away with words, which is a radio show and podcast. It's all about the evolution of language through culture and history. And I'm also the author of Friends with Words, Adventures in Language Land. Hello, it's Anthony and the BBC Bureau in Washington, DC. It's Sumi sitting along with Anthony in Washington. And I'm Celie Hatton, I'm joining you from London. I'm joining the American studio, Celia, the worldwide, so-called worldwide headquarters. I'm really enjoying this chair. I must say, it's very comfortable here. And I coffee table, nice fake books behind me, so yeah, I'm enjoying it here, yeah. So you have listeners around the world, I hear. And they have presented questions to us about the midterm elections and what it all means. Yeah, we got questions from Japan, from Sweden, from India and beyond. And we were really impressed at how our audience responded to our call for questions. So maybe we should get going. I've got a lot of questions for you and Sumi Anthony. But actually, before we get to those questions, I want to tackle the most important election word of all that's coming up now. And that's midterm. So can you take us through? What are midterms? And why are they so important? Why should our global audience be paying attention to them? And you should we go to you first? Yeah, I know. I mean, midterm sort of what we talk about all the time. It seems like every other word here right now is midterms. But what it means, technically, is the elections in the middle of a presidential term. While presidential elections here in the United States happen every four years, congressional elections happen every two years. So sometimes they coincide with a presidential election, but sometimes they're right in the middle of that presidential term. And that's what we're dealing with here. Midterm elections and the people who are running are every single seat in the House of Representatives. 435 seats up every two years or every candidate in the House is out there running for re-election. Or if it's an open seat, they're trying to fill someone who is no longer there. Now in the Senate, it's 100 seats there. A third of the Senate is up. So we've got about 34 senators running for election. And then you have a series of governors mansions and a lot of legislative races and states all over the country. And some of those governors races are key because they're in places like Wisconsin and Michigan and Georgia and Arizona. These are governors races in battleground states for the presidential election in two years. They're going to be the people in charge of those states who are going to be overseen the elections when we're talking about who's going to be president next. I think we just introduced another term battleground states. We'll get to that. But yeah, exactly. It's the middle of the term. And I am guilty as anyone of banding about the word midterms in this Washington office. As Anthony said, you're hearing it every other word, but it is a referendum on the president. And I think that's important for all of our listeners around the world to know is this is a way for voters to make clear how they feel about the president and the party in the White House. These midterms are particularly important because it really will determine which party controls Congress for the last two years of Donald Trump. These two years of Donald Trump's presidency right now the Republicans have both chambers of Senate and the House. In some midterm elections, you think one party is going to hold on to it. There's not really up in the air, but this time around it is balanced on a knife's edge. Democrats are certainly hoping to take back the House of Representatives. They seem to have an improving chance of taking back the Senate. If they win even one of those two chambers, let alone both, they are going to be able to grind Donald Trump's legislative agenda to a halt and also step up their oversight issues of penis, alterings, maybe even try to impeach Trump for some of his senior advisors. So this is a particularly high stakes midterm elections that could curtail Donald Trump's powers. Anthony SUNY, you've given us a lot of reasons to really pay attention to these midterms, whether we live in the United States or not. How about we turn now to some questions from our audience and things that they've been wondering as they hear the analysis in the lead up to this midterm vote. Here's an audio note that we got from Japan. Hi, I'm Craig, an American living in Hiroshima, Japan. And I'd like to know what it really means to be an informed voter. An informed voter. So we let's turn to you first. What makes someone an informed voter? It's a great question because being an informed voter means simply paying close attention to what you are voting for. And it's not that simple because in a midterm election, you can have a vote on your state level. You can be voting for a local representatives for judges in your district. But then as Anthony also said on the federal level, you have your members of Congress and senators who might be up for election. And I was just actually speaking to a student at the Ohio State University. I was traveling in Ohio the last few days and he said, I want to be an informed voter. And the most important thing for me is that everyone researches their candidates. And I think that is a big part of being informed about what you're voting on and who you're voting for. Right. And there's so much information out there right now, but it's very hard to be informed because you don't know where the information is right or wrong. People are flooded with all of these opinions and all of these facts and all of these stories and you don't know the sources. And so it can almost be overwhelming some of these ballot measures. I vote in Virginia and there are multiple ballot measures. They're constitutional amendments on gay rights and on abortion and it's unclear necessarily how to vote on them or what you're even voting on in California. There's a wealth tax on the ballot there that would impose taxes on the super wealthy. But there are also two ballot measures next to it that would rescind the wealth tax or make it harder to implement. And so almost the confusion sometimes is part of the plan and to be an informed voter, you have to really dig down into and try to understand what it all means. And you know, American voters, they they don't always pay attention. They don't have the time kind of time that we have to sit here and follow day in and day out and politics. A lot of them may not even be able to name their presenter. Maybe the senators certainly not the Supreme Court. They can certainly don't Donald Trump and the president, but they're not voting on on that this time around. There are very few issues and few times that American politics really cuts through. I'm going to happen sometimes. It happens on big high profile issues and immigration certainly was on people's radars for quite some time. This midterm elections, affordability, it's a cost of living, it's cost of food and grocery stores, all of these things have kind of made it into the national conscience and made people care about it. And maybe that's what's making them want to be more informed or what's going to be ultimately determining how they vote. Okay, but in a sense, then, is every voter really an informed voter because they know what they're paying for groceries. They know what they're paying at the pumps. Is that really what they're looking at when they're making a decision? I think that's a really good point. Look, if you are living in the country and experiencing the economy, as you said, there's Celia every day. You are an informed voter, are you? But I think that extra step is understanding, as Anthony said, those ballot measures that are specific to your state or your district. And then also who the candidates are and where they stand on some of those issues. If you are angry about paying more at the pump, then you might want to know what exactly your candidate has said or done about that. If you don't support the war in Iran, for example, you might want to know, has your congressman or congressman voted in favor of a war powers resolution in Congress? You know, what actions are they taking on those issues that are important to you? And I think that's that next step of being an informed voter. This next word has been thrown around a lot in the months leading up to the midterms, Jerry Mantering. It's a really strange word, I think we can all agree, but our word expert, Martha Barnett, can explain the background to it for us. Jerry Manter is such a weird sounding word, and it's weird because it combines the name of a real politician with this ridiculous imaginary monster.
And the real politician was a guy named Elbridge Gary, G-E-R-R-Y. And in 1812, he was the governor of Massachusetts. And he signed this legislation that redrew the voting districts in his state to keep his political party in power. Now, redistricting here in the states anyway is accomplished by what they call packing and cracking. And packing is when you redraw the lines of a voting district to crowd as many of the opposing parties voters as you can into one district. So they win that one district in a landslide, but they lose every place else because the cracking part is when you take all those voters that you don't want to win and you split them up. So you have a slice of them here and a slice of them there. And so there are minority everywhere else. And if we go back to 1812, when Governor Gary was signing this legislation to create a new set of districts, the outline of these new districts was pretty much laughable. I mean, it was bizarrely shaped. And his political opponents said it looked like a crooked S. Or some people said it looked like a salamander. And a political cartoonist for the Boston Gazette took an image of these voting districts and he added wings and claws and a dragon's head. And they ran this political cartoon of these voting districts with the little additions that made it look like a monster. And they had a little caption that said, the Gary Mander, a new species of monster. Anthony. We're talking about House of Representatives Districts. Each state has a certain number of representatives determined by their population. And they adjust that every 10 years. And you can draw the lines anyway you want and give you a chance of winning more of those districts. I lived in Texas. I grew up there and Texas and notorious for this. They would draw lines in my home of Austin that started in Austin and then went all the way down to the Mexico border in order to make this district safe for one party or the other. And you can sit there and look across the street at your neighbor. And there's a chance that your neighbor is in a different congressional district because of the way the lines are drawn. But Republicans had redrawn some of the lines last year. And this year to try to squeeze a few more seats out of this map to maybe hold on to the House of Representatives. Democrats responded with their own map drawing in places like California and they tried in Virginia. Anthony, sometimes Gary Mandering can backfire though. Can't it? Well, we see that in this year's midterms. It's called dummy mentoring, isn't it? That's what it's called. It's basically Jerry Mandering. If you're a dummy, where you draw these lines so finally and you try to give your party a narrow majority and as many seats as you can to win as many seats as you can. But then it backfires because the opposition party does really well and washes away all of those seats that you wanted to pick up. Sometimes it may be better if you're looking at a harsh electoral climate to have safe seats and to guarantee that you're going to win a certain number of seats then to try to cut it too finally. And then it just comes up and bites you in the tail. OK, so our audience really has to pay attention on election night to whether some of these attempts to gain more seats might actually backfire. Our next audience question comes from India. I am Satyanana from India. I am sending you a word that is related to American elections. The word is stump speech. Stump speech. Let's hear what our word expert, Martha Barnett, has to say about that. Stump speech is a wonderful Americanism. That's actually pretty literal. You know, think about the 1800s, the frontier in America. You didn't have loudspeakers. You didn't have auditoriums with sound systems. And so candidates would actually stand on tree stumps to address the crowd because there was plenty of clear land and plenty of filled trees. And it's a good reminder that for most of history, that's how people made themselves hurt. Stump speech. Now, this one is big on the campaign trail, isn't it, Siomi? Yeah, it really is. And a stump speech is kind of a central theme or speech that a candidate delivers throughout their campaign. And so we've seen a number of candidates through US politics really have coined terms that they use in their stump speech or certain themes. It's a message, let's say, that they hone and deliver through their course of their campaign. And it becomes incredibly important during an election period because this is their main cell to voters, really, is that stump speech, isn't it, Anthony? Right, it's kind of like elevator pitch in business. It's your campaign message to still down to a set speech, maybe five minutes, maybe 10 minutes. You deliver over and over again to all of these different audiences. And I know Siomi, if you like, I am all right on the campaign trail following politicians around, at some point you can start to recite the speech because it's the same lines and the same anecdotes and the same stories over and over again. But it is something that is carefully formulated in order to connect with voters and get that message through. And some politicians are better than others. Obviously, Barack Obama, very gifted, Bill Clinton gifted. Trump in his own way, although his stump speeches, where you know, sometimes went for an hour and a half, his make America great again pitch. The core of that was very effective. And there have been some good stump speeches, I think, out on the campaign trail during these midterm elections. And James Talleriko, the Democrat running for Senate in Texas. He has a very, very well-tailored stump speech that has made him, if not the frontrunners, certainly someone who could win this Senate seat in Texas be the first Democrat to win there in decades. The American dream has become an American nightmare. It is too expensive to buy a home. It's too expensive to get married and have kids. It's too expensive to retire comfortably. People are working hard every day. They're planned by the rules. But those rules of today weren't written for us. They were written for billionaires. Let's go back to our audience questions. And the next question is a good one. Hi, my name is Brandy. I am from Providence, Rhode Island in the US. I think we could use some help with the terms lobbyist versus Super PAC, APAC, and the ways that the different groups and people are able to use their funds and their influence in elections as well as on our political officials once they're in office in order to move their agendas forward. A great question from Brandy. All right, Anthony, let's go to you. Let's break this down. What's the difference between a PAC and a Super PAC? Oh, yeah, sure. Throw the complicated campaign finance question to me. But a PAC is short for political action committee. And there are organizations that candidates can set up in order to help them fund other candidates. If you're, say, a influential senator, you could set up a PAC and take donations to that. And then you can use that PAC to make donations to other candidates to help yourself maybe move up and leadership ranks within the center. Maybe you want to run for president as a way of getting favors. There are limits on money that PACs can give to other candidates. I think it's about $5,000 per candidate. But they can use that money, however they want one. They've been given to a given it by a PAC. So it is very valuable. A Super PAC is an independent organization that is not associated with a candidate that can take unlimited amounts of donations from corporations or interested parties or billionaires who want to throw their money around. Think about Elon Musk and the money he has been spending in these elections recently. They can spend money advertising in favor of a candidate. They can spend money attacking another candidate. They're just not the same kind of controls on that. So Super PACs really are super, I suppose, and they are a very powerful force in American politics these days. They are. They can't legally coordinate with a campaign. And that's where some of these questions are raised about how is this money being generated and is there any coordination? But legally, as I said, they can't. And you mentioned Elon Musk. I was looking it up before we came in here. He's given about $366 million so far in these midterm elections. And think about these vast sums of money that you can distribute to a Super PAC that can aid candidates without directly coordinating with them. And that is incredibly important, if you think about the fact that all of the ads that can be bought with that money, the people on the ground that you can hire to kind of go door knocking, it's so on and so forth. There are so many ways that this money can be used really effectively. And usually, if you have a big money advantage, and I will say that's the case with the Republicans in these midterm elections, they have a significant money advantage over the Democrats that is seen as being fairly effective in being able to sway at least some votes. Okay, so speaking of money, though, there's another term, dark money. How does dark money play into what's happening in the lead up to the midterms? I'll take that one again. Dark money is money like it sounds. You don't know where it comes from. It's mysterious. It's from donors who don't have to disclose themselves. And they can give money to these super PACs without having to reveal who they are and what their agenda may be. So if sunlight is the best disinfectant of American politics, dark money is in the shadows. And this is one of the big complaints about this political system is the way that dark money can come into an election. And perhaps, you know, really change the direction that election will go. Hard money is money that is disclosed.
is money that is directly given that you can track, but it is the dark money that, as you said, Anthony, can really turn elections in one way or another or that's a concern certainly. Anthony Simi, let's wrap up the money chat for now and let's get to another audience question. And this one focuses on a term that many of us have probably heard, but we haven't thought much about what it actually means. The term "beltway" refers to an actual motorway, it's interstate 495, it's the 64 mile loop that goes around Washington DC. And so if you're in what's called the beltway, if you're inside the beltway, then you're a part of that Washington political world, you know, you're a politician, you're a journalist or consultant or a lobbyist, you're somebody who speaks fluent Washington jargon. And so if you're outside the beltway, then you're part of the rest of America, you're not privy to all these things that are going on inside the beltway. And there were radio announcers in the 90s who sort of turned inside the beltway into a political insult, you know, that these were the near-sided people inside the beltway who really didn't know what the real America was feeling and thinking. Simi Anthony, what does it mean to be inside or outside the beltway? Is there a concern, I think, among a lot of Americans that the people here are insulated from the outside world? The economy is better here because we're the government, government-largest help support everyone here in the defense industry and all of the different money sloshing around that it feels like a kind of a different world and you don't understand how real Americans in the heartland, these are in other terms, flyover country, as they say, how they're suffering and the things that they're feeling because we are protected from it in our little elitist cocoon. And I would say I agree with that in a way because even if I go to my home city of Rochester, New York, which is not necessarily the American heartland, the discussions we're having here in Washington DC have the names we're throwing around, people are not familiar with, even those who are informed voters, the issues that dominate, let's say, the cocktails drinks discussions and the breakfasts and brunches that you have with your friends on a weekend are pretty, let's say, nuanced Washington DC politics, even kind of the meme culture within Washington DC, I think, as it's its own sub-culture and that pretty much describes to me inside the beltway. Are there any candidates running for the midterms who are really portraying themselves as coming from outside the beltway or trying to do the same thing that Donald Trump did? That's a good question. And I think that some of the ones who have been able to defeat incumbents or defeat establishment picks, like Al Sayed, the democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, they are trying to present themselves as outsiders campaigning against the elite against the establishment, even someone like James Talleriko, who I mentioned before, running for Senate in Texas, he's a state legislator, he's not a Washington insider. And if you listen to his stump speech, which we talked about before, you will hear an anti-elite, anti-billionaire class message at the heart of it that the people in Washington are beholden to the super wealthy and they don't care about the issues that are affecting people today. I think the democratic socialists in particular have represented this outside of the beltway push within the Democratic Party because they say this elite has kept the progressive wing from rising, and this is our opportunity to actually speak directly to voters and perhaps win these seats and change that by bringing in someone who's from outside the beltway into the beltway, if you will, to change that culture. Now, once you're in the beltway, things change a bit, I think, and there are some more progressive members of Congress like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who she's been accused by some of her supporters of, let's say, compromising too much, but the reality is that once you're in the beltway, things do work differently. Yeah, Cecilia, it's a powerful message and it's a message that you can only really use when you're not in power that the people in power are doing it wrong, and so you heard that from Republicans in 2016 when Trump ran, and again in 2022, and those midterm elections when they were running against Joe Biden's Democrats who were in charge, and now the shoes on the other foot, Democrats are the ones using that message against Republicans who control the White House and both chambers of Congress. So I guess turn about his fair play. Okay, well, it's really interesting. We'll have to watch to see if that tactic works this time around when we're looking at the midterm results. We're going to move on to our quickfire round in just a moment, but first, this next word isn't directly related to elections, but it is one of those most requested by our audience members. Hello, I'm Gina from Sweden, and I'm wondering if you can explain a filibuster. Is it just talking for a long time to run time out, or is there more to it than that? It is a funny sounding term I asked Martha where it comes from. The original use of filibuster meant pirates, if you can believe that. The word filibuster goes back to a Dutch word, frybatter, or an English freebooter, and that somebody who would go around seizing valuables or booty, and the word frybatter, travel through French and Spanish, and eventually return to English as filibuster. And then later in the 19th century, U.S. senators took this evocative, colorful word and started applying it to legislators who would similarly hijack legislation. They would grab the floor and they would just talk and talk and talk to try to prevent a vote. So, it's a kind of parliamentary piracy. Okay, so that's the explanation from Martha. Anthony, can you give us a little bit more scope? Is a filibuster going to become an important political tool after the midterm elections? It very well could be because it's what keeps legislation from being passed in the Senate without a super majority. Senate is 100 seats divided, evenly or close to evenly. If Democrats flip it back over, they might have a couple seat advantage. A simple majority does not get things done in the Senate. It takes 60 out of those 100 seats for big pieces of legislation there, and I don't think anyone's talking about the chances of Democrats having 60 seats in the Senate. So they're going to run into the filibuster that Republicans will use if they take back control of the Senate and House of Representatives. Some have talked about wanting to get rid of the filibuster. Will that ever happen? Sue me? Yeah, there are a number of proponents for getting rid of the filibuster, and the biggest one right now is President Trump himself. He posts about this on-trux social all the time. And look, he says that a filibuster precisely blocks the big type of legislation that Anthony mentioned there that he believes is important for the country. And he also thinks that it prevents majorities from getting anything done. And that is actually what it's intended to do is to stop this kind of quick majority-driven process that could push a bill through the Senate. But you do have real institutionalists like the Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, who has stood in the way of President Trump's wishes and said, "Look, if you get rid of the Senate filibuster, that cuts both ways. If the Democrats are back in power, then they can simply push big legislation through the Senate as well without Republicans being able to kind of put their foot down, and that it is an important procedural process that prevents one party running roughshod over the other in the Senate." And the Senate shouldn't, for that reason, be a simple majority. You need the filibuster to ensure that you have enough consent. Let's turn to our quickfire round now. Sue me, Anthony, let's see who can answer the most questions succinctly, who can define the most terms succinctly first. And we're going to do this by all say the term, and then whoever says me first gets to answer the question. We'll see how many we can get through in just a few minutes. Okay. Are you two ready? Ready. Kind of nervous. Ready. All right. Well, Blue Wave is the idea that Democrats are going to swoop through and win these midterm elections that is going to be more than just what you would expect, a handful of seats, maybe a slight victory. A blue wave is a significant title wave where you see Democrats winning in places where you might not normally expect them to. They take both chambers of Congress, it washes out Republicans. Purple state or battleground state. I'll take that one. Put red and blue together. You get purple. And that's exactly what a purple state is. It's a state that can in one election vote for Republicans in another election vote for Democrats, where you have a pretty even split sometimes between Democrats and Republicans. And there are a number of purple states at the moment that are critical for elections. Anthony mentioned them as battleground states a little bit earlier in the podcast. So there are states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia. These are states that we talk about election after election. Super voter. Yeah, that's a person who pretty much votes in every election, a local election, a ballot measure, congressional election, federal election. These are people who turn out every time and are eager to vote. Okay. Next one. Independent. I'll do that independent. Someone who does not belong to a political party, not a registered Democrat or a Republican someone who is fought over by both parties because there is a very small group of voter
in this country who are truly independent, who truly swing back and forth between the two parties. And these independent voters are the keys to a lot of these battleground, purple state, swing state elections. Ding, ding, ding. Okay, here's one we hear a lot actually in the lead up to this down ballot. What does that mean? Yeah, I can do that one. Those are races that appear a bit literally lower on the ballot. That's why we say down ballot. So they're not necessarily the member of Congress or Senator or President you're voting for. These can be city council school board seats, judges. These are lower on the ballot, but more important for people's everyday life, because they can impact their local politics and local community. Next one, gubernatorial. Having to do with a governor, gubernatorial, I mean it's a fancy word, but it basically means relating to the governor's, the governors are the senior executives in states, the 50 states in the United States. And as we mentioned, there are some gubernatorial races in places like Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania and Arizona and Wisconsin that are going to be real, really interesting to watch. And it could be a chance to determine who controls the levers of power when we look at those states being battlegrounds in the 2028 presidential race. Okay. And our last one in our quickfire round by partisan. Does it still exist? We like to think so. Yeah, something where you have both parties working together, both the Republicans and Democrats and jokes aside, there are, of course, many bipartisan projects or things that have bipartisan approval here in Washington. And let's just take one of the more recent examples, artificial intelligence. You have some bipartisan push to regulate or put guardrails around artificial intelligence. So an issue where you have Republicans and Democrats coming together to say let's do something about it. Okay. That's it. Fantastic. Thank you. Thank you Anthony. Thank you so much. I think it was pretty much evenly on both sides. So well done in the quickfire. Everyone's a winner here. Everyone's a winner. Not so in the midterm elections, but in our joint America's global newscast efforts. I think we can say that. We hope this special joint episode of the Global News podcast in America has helped demystify some of the wacky and wonderful words surrounding the midterms. Thanks to everyone who submitted questions. And thanks to Anthony Zerker, Sumi Somoskanda and Martha Barnett for sharing their expertise. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at
[email protected]. You can also now watch our episodes in full just search for the Global News podcast on YouTube. This edition was produced by Helena Burke. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Celia Hatton. Until next time. Goodbye. [Music] Get more with BBC podcasts wherever you listen. Be the first to listen to your favourite shows, like Evil Genius, Good Bad Billionaire and Your Dead To Me, with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts, Add Free, with an Amazon Music subscription.
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