The New Yorker’s (March 6 issue) article that came under the title, “Trumpcare vs. Obamacare” begins with the following paragraph;
The pitchforks are changing hands. In 2009, it was Democratic members of Congress supporting health-care reform who were set upon by outraged constituents. When they passed the Affordable Care Act anyway, it cost their party control of Congress in the 2010 midterm elections
– and ends up with the statement:
But legislators have no time to waste. Insurers must decide by April whether to offer a plan for the exchanges in 2018, and at what price. That requires certainty about the future. Pitchforks have their uses, but crafting health-care policy calls for more delicate instruments. The basic functioning of the health-care system is at stake. So are American lives.
Oxford online dictionary defines “pitchfork” simply as a noun meaning a farm tool with a long hand and two sharp metal prongs used for lifting hay, without showing any idiomatic usages.
I suspect “the pitchforks” here refers to the efforts / attempts/ measures to reform (healthcare) system. I may be wrong. I don’t understand what “the pitchforks" here represents for, and what “the pitchforks change hands” and “pitchforks have their uses” exactly mean?
Are both of them popular idioms, or the writer’s particular turn of phrases?
Best Answer
It's a metaphor for an angry mob, which are traditionally armed with pitchforks and torches in older stories.
"Pitchforks changed hands" basically means that the group that is angry is the oppositional group to the previous one.
"Pitchforks can be useful" means that it sometimes helps your cause to get angry, but the author thinks that it would be more productive to focus that energy somewhere positive.