Biden's Catholic Dog Whistle

To Scruffy...
First, the Catholic Church is supportive of human beings, including the most defenseless. This is where dignity begins. Joe Biden has forgotten it.

Don,
Sometimes I report things without meaning anything nefarious or momentous. Sometimes I just find it interesting.

I suppose I felt that in fairness to Bush, who was always inspected for code words, we should do the same for this year's crop of candidates, including the Democrats.

It's also a bit new in the sense that most of the appeals to Catholics have been from the conservative side -- on life issues. We're less familiar with how a Democrat might appeal to Catholics using particular phrases.

@Don:

It's not that a Catholic will hear Biden (or an evangelical will hear Bush) and think "aha, he's speaking to us in a secret code that nobody else gets! They all think he's talking about something else!"

A general audience member who hears Biden talk about dignity will think "yes, my dignity was damaged when I lost my last job, and/or I can see how a displaced worker's dignity would be affected, so I know what he's talking about."

Listening to the same speech, a Catholic who grew up with "The Dignity of Work" as a key principle will think those same things - but will also think, if only at some gut level, that "Biden sees the world the same way I do, and he shares my values."

In other words, the "dog whistle" conveys extra content to specific listeners, without alienating everyone else by speaking more explicitly about faith (or what-have-you). It's a way of wringing extra value out of a mass-market speech.

Of course, assuming Biden grew up with "The Dignity of Work" as a key principle and has come to view job outsourcing and other economic issues through this lens, then the dog whistle may not have been intentional; his use of "dignity" in this context may simply be the way he views the subject.

It's possible that some or all of Bush's "dog whistles" are unconscious as well, though this book excerpt suggests otherwise:

http://www.slate.com/id/2186343/entry/2186349/

(The author is clearly not a fan of Mr. Bush, although his sources seem credible; those who would prefer not to read less-than-glowing portraits of GWB might as well skip this link.)