A politician’s seemingly homespun aphorism, aimed at making them sound like they don’t hold high elected office and are just shooting the breeze with everyday people. It’s one of Vice President Joe Biden’s most frequently-uttered phrases.
Examples of Biden using the populist phrase are legions. “Folks, where's it written we cannot lead the world in the 20th century in making automobiles?" Biden said in a typical August 2012 campaign speech.
Biden also uses the phrase when speaking to fellow political elites. Like when he addressed about two dozen governors in July 2014, at the National Governors Association summer meeting. “Folks, I probably shouldn’t say this, but then again, I’m Joe Biden,” he told the governors with self-knowing self-deprecation, before expounding on partisan gridlock in Washington.
Some political experts feel “Folks” has about run its course in political conversation. Real Clear Politics Washington Bureau Chief Carl Cannon placed it at the top of his June 2014 list covering the “15 Most Annoying Expressions in Politics”.
“U.S. presidents love this word, which they find, well, folksy,” Cannon wrote. “It’s been invoked by our chief executives some 4,400 times since Herbert Hoover occupied the Oval Office. Bill Clinton loved ‘folks’ so much he used it publicly eight times during his last month in office.”
“But it’s proliferating. George W. Bush used it 21 times in his first month as president. Then he started misusing it. His most discordant example was his reference to ‘al-Qaeda, the very same folks that attacked us on September the 11th.’”
“There must be something in the White House water supply because Obama matched Bush’s January-February 2001 record by saying ‘folks’ 21 times in only two debates with Mitt Romney. The first time he used it in the Oct. 22, 2012, debate was the most jarring. Discussing military intervention in Syria, Obama said he wanted to make sure ‘we’re not putting arms in the hands of folks who eventually could turn them against us or allies in the region.’”
Folks can be seen as a variant of the politician’s favorite “The American People”. Every politician, even the ones in complete disagreement, claims to speak for the people. It’s invoked often enough to have achieved drinking-game status. Vanderbilt University communication studies professor Paul Stob says “the people” has become “the keyword for all populist discourse.”
That means that true believers can call the agreement that ended the 2013 government shutdown a lousy deal for the American people, while President Obama said the shutdown offered incontrovertible evidence that “the American people are completely fed up with Washington.”
But as Stob notes, there are other subsets to describe political audiences: hardworking] Americans, American families, the good people of [fill in the blank with any state or city], God-fearing Americans, “real Americans,” and so on.
And there is “We the people,” taken from the first three words of the Constitution. It’s become an increasingly popular expression of outrage on both liberal and conservative circles, as in “What about ‘We the people?” Conservatives also talk about “the undeserving,” or those deemed unworthy of government benefits that have to rely on “handouts.”