Democrats and their allies use an awful lot of words and phrases no ordinary person would ever dream of saying. Ditto Labour?

[IwantToRetire]

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 intent of this language is to include, broaden, empathize, accept, and embrace.

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.

Why the tortured language? After all, many Democrats are aware that the words and phrases we use can be profoundly alienating. But they use it because plain, authentic language that voters understand often rebounds badly among many activists and advocacy organizations.

These activists and advocates may take on noble causes, but in doing so they often demand compliance with their preferred messages; that is how “birthing person” became a stand-in for mother or mom.

Full article at https://www.thirdway.org/memo/was-it-something-i-said

'Folx' is one I find particularly baffling. 'Folk' - or even 'folks', if you really must - is already gender neutral. The x is utterly redundant.

That's plain speaking for you! Rather a lot of people have understood the article the same way as you.

“Tedioux” has made me spill my coffeeb

the article is a glimmer of light in the right direction but very far from seeing the end of the tunnel

“These say “your views on traditional genders and gender roles are at best quaint.”

• Birthing person/inseminated person
• Pregnant people
• Chest feeding
• Cisgender”

No these words say “I am imposing gendered stereotypes on gender neutral words like ‘mother’, ‘women’ and ‘breastfeeding’, and attacking language that enables women to organise as a sex class and protect their rights.”

These words say “I am sexist - if I represent the party that is supposed to defend women’s rights, it’s no wonder so many American women have lost abortion rights!”

Agree that this is article is part of the problem!! It's all about the messaging, rather than any engagement with the idea that maybe the POLICIES are the problem, and it's not the first article like this I've read either @Subaroo.

There was a post-mortem podcast with Ezra Klein I think shortly after the election, with two Biden staffers where the consensus was that the voters weren't hearing their policies so the solution was to double down with messaging. No engagement whatsoever that voters maybe heard their policies, understood them just fine beyond the words used, and didn't like what they heard!

There literally was some quote about "Democrats should be curious about why their voters didn't vote for them" - I mean, what?! Of COURSE they should be curious. The time to have been curious was before the election, not after losing to Trump. The level of top down, we tell you what the policies will be and if you don't vote for it then you're racist/ignorant/uninformed is the root of the problem.

There was also a sense of shrinking the tent so small on the basis of ideological purity that there should be no surprise that the people who find themselves outside the tent either sit out the election or go elsewhere.

There's a similar but not entirely the same thing with Labour. Labour doesn't have quite the issue with postmodernist jargon. On the other hand, I try to think of people at the top of Labour who want to appeal to the median voter, and there's Morgan McSweeney - who may be on his way out - and Wes Streeting and maybe Shabana Mahmood, and that's about it.

What's the same is the whole double down on the messaging approach. Labour (and the Tories!) have got this feckless leadership class who don't know how to do anything except narrative management.

But their idea of narrative management is so 2010. People like McSweeney are still living in a world where you plant a story in the Times, it gets picked up by Newsnight, it's amplified by regime mouthpieces like James O'Brien or Lewis Goodall, and everyone believes it. The important thing is not for Starmer to actually stop the people smuggling gangs, but to get everyone repeating that he's doing it.

But half the country simply don't trust the legacy media any more, and have tuned them out. Some will be watching GB News or reading Matt Goodwin, many more will be getting news stories from Facebook, and more still have just tuned out altogether and don't believe anything they're told.

Labour can be successful in getting the BBC to present Starmer in a positive light, and they still can't shift his approval rating in the polls about 16%. There's something weird about this time that feels a bit like Hungary in the 1980s when everyone knew communism was doomed and even the regime bigwigs were really just going through the motions even if they couldn't admit to themselves they were doomed.

Or maybe another way of looking at it is: you know those threads on AIBU where the OP says something unfashionable, she gets dogpiled for 1000 posts by people telling her what a terrible person she is, and then the vote goes the other way?

My memory of this is a bit hazy, but IIRC the Democrats threw a bunch of resources at Reddit in 2016. Before then the political side of Reddit was freewheeling, a bit libertarian, a bit anti-establishment. Bernie Sanders had lots of fans there, Ron Paul had his fans, I wouldn't say Trump was popular exactly but there were lots of people who appreciated his entertainment value. Everyone was just meh on Hillary.

Then it all changed, and the US politics centric subreddits became totally pro-Hillary and very quick to ban dissenters. I wonder how this coincides with them becoming really censorious on genderwoo.

If they were doing it on Reddit, they were certainly doing it on other social media.

The reflex is still to control the moderation, or failing that to flood the comments, and thereby to control the discussion. Then they're surprised when the vote goes the other way.

It does make you wonder how much the sense many of us previously had that we were fairly sure of our political alignments might have been manufactured.

I also wonder when - not if - there will be real control of the media spaces again. Right now it's so fractured the political interests can't control it, but I don't think that will remain the case. The infrastructure of the internet is too vulnerable to high level control.

The problem is the that Democrats do govern on wildly out-of-touch social positions, but that governing is done administratively through grant funded non-profits. The shocking scale of that was shown when the DOGE wrecking ball made its way through the US federal government, but it's just as insidious at the local level. It's an incestuous situation where activist staffed quangos get ideologically committed politicians elected and those politicians make sure those organizations continue to get funding. It's one step removed from naked grift.

@GallantKumquat there was a lot of discussion of the influence of "the Groups" in the months immediately after the election - see for instance:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ezraklein/comments/1hbb13a/how_should_democrats_deal_with_the_groups/
https://www.vox.com/politics/388752/democrats-groups-jentleson-favreau-klein-yglesias

But I feel like since Trump really got going, all that has pretty much stopped. Since May, it feels like all I have heard from the Dems is about Gaza, ICE raids and tariffs - and not so coincidentally, these are issues on which they have no real ability to influence policy. The internal fight about this whole "abundance agenda" is looking promising and I personally am very hopeful will lead to some Democrats realising that they are allowed to reject "Blue MAGA", reject the Omnicause and move to the centre.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/05/abundance-democrats-political-power/682929/

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/wanted-democrat-with-some-spine-advocacy-groups-welcomefest-centrists-ken-martin-david-hogg

I don't exactly disagree, and Chait is one of my favorite political journalists in the US. What I worry about is the seeming reset that seems to continually happen.

One example is trans sports in high school. The Biden administration floated this idea early on, and given the considerable backlash, the plan to enshrine it in Title IX seemed definitely dead. And, by all accounts, the Biden administration seemed to have learned a lesson that the issue was political Kryptonite. And yet the issue kept coming back and by the end of the Biden's term was enshrined in administrative law. So, a deeply unpopular issue that had been given considerable public vetting and dramatically rejected, was simply resurrected after a short while and implemented.

The Harris campaign constantly complained that Harris and the Biden administration she was part of weren't talking about the trans issue - that was something that only Republicans did. To an extent that's true, but what the public caught on to was they they had been aggressively pursuing the trans agenda behind-the-scenes through government agencies and not-for-profits, and playing dumb. I agree that both the Democratic leadership, and the rank and file, would like to switch to a debate about abundance. The question I have is whether Democratic leadership even has the ability to say no to its activists.

To take a recent example the DNC was pilloried last year for the woke debacle that their leadership convention turned into. I watched it through and it was one of the worst public performances of woke politics I've ever witnessed. It's not hyperbolic to say that it was beyond parody - at one point they stipulated the required diversity makeup of their leadership with respect to gender, specifying the complex algorithm for how non-binary was to be computed! Yet even after all the bad press they received, once again the Democratic National Committee opened this year's meeting with a land acknowledgment. It seems no one in leadership is able to say: "No, we're not going to do this bit of virtual signalling performance that accomplishes nothing and makes us look bad." The implication is that activists have captured the institution and are insulated from public opinion and even from the authority of party leadership itself.

I think it's a combination of two things:
If you're a snake oil salesman and wander into a town calling it snake oil no one is going to buy it. If you make up fancy new words and get an elaborate eloquent articulate schpiel going, just like I used four fancy words to describe bullshit, it seems far more attractive. Just as @TheKeatingFive and @MurkyWeather already said. When you're selling bullshit you've got to make it look and smell pretty.
The other is the academic class loves fancy words. Why use one when you could use twelve, or better yet twenty? Using fancy words creates a divde between those who understand what all the words mean, and those who don't. That divide is how you create the priesthood class for your new religion. The chosen ones in the know get to look down their noses as the stupids, feel vastly superior to them, scold them, order them about, have power over them.

When you're selling bullshit to the stupids fancy words help a lot. You also get to feel superior.

@GallantKumquat
To take a recent example the DNC was pilloried last year for the woke debacle that their leadership convention turned into. I watched it through and it was one of the worst public performances of woke politics I've ever witnessed. It's not hyperbolic to say that it was beyond parody - at one point they stipulated the required diversity makeup of their leadership with respect to gender, specifying the complex algorithm for how non-binary was to be computed! Yet even after all the bad press they received, once again the Democratic National Committee opened this year's meeting with a land acknowledgment. It seems no one in leadership is able to say: "No, we're not going to do this bit of virtual signalling performance that accomplishes nothing and makes us look bad." The implication is that activists have captured the institution and are insulated from public opinion and even from the authority of party leadership itself.

Did you see the young? socialists members conference? It too was a parody that no writer ever got paid for. Some poor young asian woman trying to open the conference, and then the never ending stream of complaints. "Don't clap, it triggers those of us with PTSD", "move around more quietly", "do jazz hands instead of clapping". Everything was triggering to one minority or another. An incessant stream of points of order. The young asian lady doing everything she could to address each interruption in turn. I swear after about 15 minutes the young asian lady looked like she wanted to murder the ever living fuck out of every last one of them. I bet she voted for Trump after that.

There was also a sense of shrinking the tent so small on the basis of ideological purity that there should be no surprise that the people who find themselves outside the tent either sit out the election or go elsewhere.

I can see parallels with Labour and definitely Tory's here but our system there are more than two parties - tatical voting a given and the electorate like the main parties is fairly brutal wth unpopular leaders.

I think US Democrates think well they'll have to vote for us next time - so having unpopular polices and using obfuscation language to hide that - doesn't really matter to them. Sadly they may be right.

I think Harris was too late to be a good candiate - but also too early - less time for voters to hear the vacuaous interviews I heard would have been to her benefit but I think there are more fundamnetal issues with the parties and connections to the actual voters that frankly predate last few elections - and are being sort of seen in other democracies to a less extent.

I mean there was so much tone deaf messaging from the Harris campaign last year, I sometimes wondered if they were actually trying to throw the election.

A contact in Nevada was telling me about this. Nevada is a working class state with a populist streak, and the Democratic machine there has long been built on the Culinary Union, who organise hotel, casino and restaurant workers in Vegas. The Harris campaign was running ads in Nevada boasting about her support from Dick Cheney, John Bolton and a bunch of CIA operatives, retired generals and other Deep State hacks. Trump was promising no tax on tips. Guess who won Nevada.

Or there was the ad aimed at male voters that featured very obviously gay actors cosplaying as working class men, sitting on flatbed trucks and similar, boasting about how they were "man enough" to support Harris.

Or there was the ad aimed at young men, trying to scare them with the idea that a GOP Congress would take their porn away.

Or there was the ad aimed at Republican women, narrated by well known husband stealer Julia Roberts, encouraging them to lie to their husbands about which way they were voting.

They were just spectacularly missing the mark every time.

And then, after the election, they're dumb enough to elect David Hogg as DNC vice chair, then they get rid of him after a few months, not because he's political kryptonite, but under some arcane interpretation of the DNC's gender parity rules.

It reminds me of that time in the 1980s when the Guardian tried to produce a tabloid with the same style as the Sun, and it was just shit, because Guardian editors and writers just assumed that Sun readers were idiots. They never thought to ask why the Sun outsold the Guardian many times over.

It is astonishing how they got it so wrong on so many levels.

Thesis will be written on this topic in the future.

And many of them still won't see that they got it wrong.

Though I've heard Obama knew Harris was a lost cause from the beginning and didn't want her. Which I can believe because I don't think he's a fool. It maybe explains some of his missteps, he was desperate.

I do think language matters. Obviously if the policy is bad you can’t dress it up.
Some words do just put people off and have this air of smugness that’s more about signaling to people that you’re so progressive and better because you use birthing person over pregnant woman for example. I do think it puts people off and gives ammunition before people have heard the policy. I remember tuning into the Labour conference a few years ago and the speaker addressed the crowd as “comrades” - it was just so unserious and annoying that I just turned it off.

You see that clearly in Scotland with the SNP funding so-called charities to lobby their message back to them.

It boils down to:

”The voters are wrong, we need to use clearer language to tell them so”

One example is trans sports in high school. The Biden administration floated this idea early on, and given the considerable backlash, the plan to enshrine it in Title IX seemed definitely dead. And, by all accounts, the Biden administration seemed to have learned a lesson that the issue was political Kryptonite. And yet the issue kept coming back and by the end of the Biden's term was enshrined in administrative law.

Biden signed Executive Order 13988 which replaced sex in Title IX with Gender Identity on the day of his inauguration. He further amended Title IX to embed it more near the end of his administration.

Language is power really. If you can get people to change their words and lose say a clear descriptor eg woman then you’ve won a lot of the battle.

Incidentally I’m just finishing up 1984 for the second time. Two plus two and all that.

And a long time ago studying linguistics for a bit, i can’t remember much except that language meant power, due to changing thought.

@SouthWamses I remember that executive order on day one and thinking - where was that in the Biden campaign?? this expansive use of an EO is going to come back and bite the Dems in the bum when the Republicans inevitably regain power. What is sauce for the goose etc.

Same on book banning - the left in the USA loves to talk about Republican book bans from libraries without any recognition of the fact that they have effectively banned books for "problematic content" or political correctness in the past as well.

That's called the Sapir-Whorf theory, but I think it's fallen out of favour in linguistic circles. It's controversial, at best.

Possibly I can’t remember.

There’s a reason ideology resets language, it’s a power play.