Looking for Red Meat Political Terms That Won't Bring a Hail of Dead Cats

the nattering nabobs of negativism. That is known as red meat rhetoric. When you talk about 'there is no red meat in this speech,' that means there is no ammunition you can feed your supporters to use or throw into the cage of a lion that was hungry.

New Deal' or 'take you to a New Frontier' -- I've just quoted President [Franklin] Roosevelt and [John] Kennedy - or suggest a New Covenant. Now that was suggested by Bill Clinton and it didn't fly for some reason. You never know when the political language is going to work or when it's gonna lay an egg.

superdelegate. We used to call them party elders or, before that, party bosses. The fun of the political language is to stop and say 'What am I saying? Does it have the right overtones, the right coloration?' When we talk about superdelegates, there is a sinister quality to 'superdelegates,' because it suggests some delegates are subdelegates, or not as important. And that's going to be a controversy in the coming Democratic convention.

fire in the belly as one example.

fired up? Are you ready to go?' And they would shout back 'Ready to go!' And that gave the feeling that, indeed, he had fire in the belly.

left in a hail of dead cats. You can envision a cartoon really of a man running with cats being thrown at him.

dead cat bounce. When a cat hits the ground and bounces back, it doesn't mean it's alive, it just means that was what we would call a sucker rally.