Democrats are alienating Americans by their use of “tortured language” and should stop using 45 words and phrases including “patriarchy” and “privilege,” according to a memo obtained by Politico.
“For a party that spends billions of dollars trying to find the perfect language to connect to voters, Democrats and their allies use an awful lot of words and phrases no ordinary person would ever dream of saying,“ the memo says.
While Democrats’ intentions are good, “The effect of this language is to sound like the extreme, divisive, elitist, and obfuscatory enforcers of wokeness. To please the few, we have alienated the many — especially on culture issues, where our language sounds superior, haughty and arrogant."
The memo was published on the website of Third Way, a nonprofit organization that describes itself as a center-left think tank that “champions moderate policy and political ideas.”
“We are doing our best to get Democrats to talk like normal people and stop talking like they’re leading a seminar at Antioch,” Third Way’s executive vice president of public affairs, Matt Bennett, told Politico. “We think language is one of the central problems we face with normie voters, signaling that we are out of touch with how they live, think and talk.”
The memo says the alienating words and phrases fall into six categories:
“Therapy speak” includes words like privilege, dialoguing, othering, microaggression and body shaming.
“Seminar room language” includes “critical theory,” “systems of oppression,” “Overton window,” “cultural appropriation” and “existential threat,” whether to climate, the planet or democracy.
“Organizer jargon” includes “stakeholders,” “the unhoused,” “barriers to participation,” “food insecurity” and “person who immigrated” (as opposed to immigrant).
“Gender and orientation correctness” includes words and phrases such as “birthing person,” “heteronormative,” “cisgender,” “deadnaming” and “LGBTQIA+.”
“The shifting language of racial constructs” includes labels such as Latinx and BIPOC, and the words allyship, intersectionality and “minoritized communities.”
The final category, “explaining away crime,” includes the words “justice-involved,” “incarcerated people” and “involuntary confinement.”
The memo comes at a time when Democrats are engaged in party-wide soul-searching over how they lost the White House to Donald Trump two times. While some efforts focus on how to win back young men who voted for Trump, others involve cursing more in an effort to convey authenticity.
Longtime strategist James Carville has been sharply critical of the party in recent months, and recently told Jesse Watters on Fox News, “I want somebody to talk in clear definitive language and communicate with people in a simple elegant way and that’s what the Democratic Party needs.” He has also told Jen Psaki on MSNBC that Democrats need to stop using “that idiotic NPR jargon” when talking to voters.
The memo, published Aug. 22, seems to codify the sort of things that Carville has been saying.
The authors, who are not identified, admit that they have used some of this language in their writing in the past, but said that when “policymakers are public-facing, the language we use must invite, not repel; start a conversation, not end it; provide clarity, not confusion.”
For “a sizable segment of the American public,” the 45 words and phrases are a red flag, the authors said.
“Before you draft your angry tweet thread, think about conversations with persuadable voters in your own life — especially friends, family, and co-workers — and consider whether the use of the language above would help or hurt your case."
