IN WHICH I TRY TO POLICE THE LANGUAGE POLICE WHO ARE TRYING TO POLICE THE LANGUAGE POLICE

One positive consequence of the FBI raid on John Bolton's house and the release of the Ghislaine Maxwell interview is that the Bolton and Maxwell stories helped bury this story, first reported by Axios:

A blunt memo from Third Way, a center-left think tank run by lifelong Democrats, implores opponents of President Trump to ditch jargon that's off-putting and even "deeply alienating" to many of the mainstream voters the party needs to win back.

... Third Way warns Democrats to be wary "of words proliferating in elite circles that have closed off open conversations and have made it uncomfortable for many people to engage in hard topics."

The words Third Way says Democrats shouldn't use include "Therapy-Speak" (dialoguing, othering, microaggression, centering, and so on), "Seminar Room Language" (subverting norms, systems of oppression, cultural appropriation, heuristic, and other terms), "Organizer Jargon" (for instance, stakeholders), and words connected to race and gender (the dread Latinx, as well as pregnant people, chest feeding, heteronormative, et cetera).

I want to un-bury this story briefly because it reveals quite a few of the mistakes Democrats make in this political climate. Most of these mistakes aren't mistakes of language usage.

The first mistake: Why make this a news story? Third Way is free to recommend that Democrats avoid the use of certain words -- but why go public with this scolding? Why did Third Way run to Axios with this memo and say, Here, publish this? Too many Democrats believe it's good for the party to publicly proclaim that party members are screwing up. This sends a message that quite a few Democrats bafflingly regard as persuasive to voters: We suck! Vote for us! Third Way's memo should have been privately circulated.

The release of the memo also reveals a big difference between the two parties. When Newt Gingrich was trying to conquer Congress for the GOP, he circulated a list of words Republicans should use -- "Optimistic Positive Governing Words" such as change, opportunity, truth, moral, and courage, alongside "Contrasting Words" party members should use in reference to Democrats (decay, failure, crisis, destructive, sick, pathetic, and others). When will a Democratic group compile a list of words that say good things about their own party and bad things about their opponents? Are establishment Democrats simply unable to imagine themselves as the good guys?

I agree that Democrats should avoid using most of the words on Third Way's list -- they're jargony and sterile. But they're words Democrats actually do avoid using. Can you name a single Democrat who was on the ballot in 2024 and used heuristic or chest feeding on the campaign trail, or anywhere else? I bet you can't. Scott Lemieux is right:

I'm honestly not sure what to do about the media consensus that Democratic politicians are responsible for everything ever said at an obscure academic conference but Republicans are not responsible for the rhetoric of Republican presidents

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— Scott Lemieux (@lemieuxlgm.bsky.social) August 22, 2025 at 8:38 PM

Fox News and other right-wing media outlets have worked very hard to persuade their audience that every random person on the left-liberal spectrum who says or does something even remotely embarrassing is a stand-in for every member of the Democratic Party. But the liberal-left media won't flood the zone with days and days of embarrassing coverage of, for instance, right-wing preachers who say women shouldn't vote, or a Republican gubernatorial candidate who called himself a "Black Nazi" on a porn bulletin board. And Democratic politicians won't do it either.

Republicans have a more highly developed propaganda infrastructure, but that's not the only problem. Democrats could try to hang every embarrassing right-winger around the necks of the rest of the Republican Party, but most Democrats shy away from a simple message: The Republican Party is bad. Democrats are okay at attacking individual opponents on the campaign trail, and they're willing to tie Donald Trump around other Republicans' necks, but they treat Trump as an anomaly, someone who's not a normal Republican, apparently because they can't stop arguing that the Republican Party is full of fine people they really want to work with on a bipartisan basis.

Democrats need to get over this. The Republican Party is bad. Democrats need to say it's bad. If they're afraid they'll alienate Republican voters, please note that Republicans have categorically described Democrats as evil and morally bankrupt for decades, and this hasn't prevented former Democratic voters from switching to the GOP. Democrats should try making We're right, their wrong the party's main message -- and they should focus on using language to attack Republicans, not fellow Democrats.