Some Democratic strategists have finally discovered something already known to sentient Americans: their crumbling party uses word terms that rightfully render them unserious. Now, they are begging members to choose their words more carefully in order to better hide their radical views from voters.
On Friday, the left-leaning policy think tank Third Way published a memo titled “Was It Something I Said?” In the document, the group admits Democrats have alienated Americans with “superior, haughty, and arrogant language.”
In Third Way’s view, this elitist language is a primary barrier in their quest to stop President Trump and MAGA. By continuing down this current path, Americans will continue to side with the president and his party, even with certain misgivings.
To rectify this, Third Way included a list of 45 words Democrats should avoid to avoid repelling voters. These include terms such as patriarchy, triggering, safe space, body-shaming, Latinx, and cisgender.
“These are words that people simply do not say, yet they hear them from Democrats,” the group writes. “Those words put up their own Ivy League walls between policymakers and voters. “
Third Way divided the list into six categories: Therapy-Speak, Seminar Room Language, Organizer Jargon, Gender/Orientation Correctness, The Shifting Language of Racial Constructs, and Explaining Away Crime.
Here is the full list of words and categories:
Therapy-Speak
1. Privilege
2. Violence (as in “environmental violence”)
3. Dialoguing
4. Othering
5. Triggering
6. Microaggression/assault/invalidation
7. Progressive stack
8. Centering
9. Safe space
10. Holding space
11. Body shaming
Seminar Room Language
12. Subverting norms
13. Systems of oppression
14. Critical theory
15. Cultural appropriation
16. Postmodernism
17. Overton Window
18. Heuristic
19. Existential threat to [climate, the planet, democracy, the economy]
Organizer Jargon
20. Radical transparency
21. Small ‘d’ democracy
22. Barriers to participation
23. Stakeholders
24. The unhoused
25. Food insecurity
26. Housing insecurity
27. Person who immigrated
Gender/Orientation Correctness
28. Birthing person
29. Inseminated person
30. Pregnant people
31. Chest feeding
32. Cisgender
33. Deadnaming
34. Heteronormative
35. Patriarchy
36. LGBTQIA+