President Obama got out on the campaign trail for Washington Governor Jay Inslee, testing out some phrases that’ll likely be repeated often between now and November. Obama used not just Hillary Clinton’s catchphrase “stronger together” but digs like “charlatan” and “flim-flam.” The latter two are just what we don’t need according to the President, who implied that the GOP was taking advantage of genuine public fears to manipulate citizens to work against our better interests.
Saying “we don’t have time for bigotry and we didn’t have time for flim-flam,” Obama warned that the present moment is critical. Dictionary.com defines flim-flam as: “a trick or deception, especially a swindle or confidence game involving skillful persuasion or clever manipulation of the victim.” The concern on the Democrats’ side is that the persuasion, as in the above definition, is being put across skillfully. Flim-flam has a long successful history to go with its negative connotation. P.T. Barnum, famous for “there’s a sucker born every minute,” knew it better than anyone. Maybe until now, when a common headline is “Trump embraces comparisons to P.T. Barnum.”
