on the stump

興味深い記事がありました。なぜオバマは女性票を多く獲得できたのでしょうか、という内容です。元大統領候補者たちの取り巻く環境、発言など慎重に書かれています。

気になったのが最後のon the stumpです。これはあまりにも有名ですが、自分にはまったく馴染みがなかったので取り上げます。このstumpは「切り株」を意味する名詞ですが、ほかにも米語用法で「遊説」の意味があり、on the stumpで「選挙活動中の」という意味になります。これはおそらく、昔は、候補者が切り株の上に立って演説したことから来ているのではないかと考えられます。(Othello)

Why Obama won the women's vote | US news | The Guardian
Mitt Romney's campaign was marked by outdated pronouncements on rape, abortion and family life. No wonder single women voted so overwhelmingly for Obama
（中略）
The sobering fact is that if Romney had won, with three places on the Supreme Court potentially up for grabs during his tenure, he could have changed the social landscape of the United States. According to exit polls, 68% of single women voted to stop him – women who, I think it is safe to assume, voted partly out of a desire to retain governance of their own ovaries, rather than outsource them, say, to a Republican senator from Missouri. This is as decisive a moment in feminism as there has been. Debates about where we are in a post-post-feminist world, how squeamish women are about calling themselves feminists, whether to wax or not to wax – all the tap-dancing that supposedly must be done these days to engage women in their own political interests – all of that fell away. Red or blue, left or right, "career woman" or "homemaker", they voted as one.

As Obama said on the stump: "Don't boo; vote. Voting is the best revenge!"