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Reader question: Please explain “whip hand”, as in this: Voters have the whip hand. My comments: In other words, your votes count. They mean something. In an election for public office, for example, voters via their votes control who gets elected. Therefore, indirectly, they control the man or woman and their policies. That’s the ideal, i.e. idealistic situation. Usually, you see, after people get elected, they begin to ignore their policy promises. Or, to put it another way, they often fail to keep their promises for whatever reason. Otherwise, the world would’ve been different. I mean, we won’t delve into it because it’s a big topic to tackle. Here, let’s instead be satisfied with mastering the phrase “whip hand”. Whip hand, you see, is literally the hand that wields the whip. If you go to places driving a cart horse, as was the case in the old days before automobiles occupy all the streets, you’ll see the point immediately. The driver, by cracking the whip, leads the horse to go to this place and that, wherever. Hence, he who has the whip in hand is the one who is in control. Metaphorically speaking, people who have the whip hand have power over others in a particular situation. In other words, they have, um, the upper hand. If, for example, we say so-and-so always have the whip hand over another, we notice that this so-and-so gets to boss the other one around. | 
