If Democrats are going to win they need to stop saying things Republicans say they say

The Third Way, a think tank great at getting media write-ups but not evidently providing any other “value,” got predictable positive coverage for circulating a list of “woke” terms that Democratic politicians are purportedly using to alienate voters. My reaction, like a lot of other people’s, was to ask which Democrats running for national office were using any of these terms:

i consume an extraordinary amount of political content and i have never seen someone in elected office use the term "birthing people"— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) Aug 22, 2025 at 8:53 AM

I was given a single example, from a short-term house backbencher who lost in a primary. But who knows, maybe Dems running for office are using these terms more than I’ve noticed?

Helpfully, Lindsey Cormack has stepped in with a systematic study of the question:

I don’t know anyone at Third Way and had never encountered that group or website before, so none of this is “personal”, but when someone asks me to look at congressional word usage – I’m pretty much always up for it.

I agree that many of the words listed have more negatives than positives in political arenas. But the idea that Democrats have been the ones driving these terms into the public sphere is worth checking against the evidence. Terms like “woke,” “critical race theory,” or “diversity, equity, and inclusion” didn’t come out of Congress, they migrated from leftist activist or academic spaces…and then were repeated endlessly by Republicans more-so than Democrats, but in a way to complain that Democrats had been using them too much. In fact, this is the topic of a book I’m working on (and if that’s interesting to you, I’d be happy to hear your thoughts on the matter).

Here’s how it breaks down when we check the DCinbox archive of 208,000+ official congressional e-newsletters from 2010 to today to see who uses the words and terms outlined in the Third Way memo.

You can click through for the results, but a lot of the Third Ways boogeymen terms have no appeared in a single congressional email since 2010, some are used not very often and similarly by members of both parties, some are actually used by Democrats more but generally rarely, and some are used almost exclusively by Republicans. The latter is perhaps the most telling category — terms like “birthing person” from the Third Party list are terms used only by Republican politicians to falsely accuse Democrats of using them. The only member of Congress to use the term “microaggression” or “cultural appropriation” is Matt Gaetz.

Cormack’s conclusion:

Looking at actual usage, the Third Way memo reads less like an audit of Democrats’ language and more like a list of terms Republicans tell us Democrats are saying. The data show that many of these phrases barely exist in constituent communications, and when they do, Republicans are often the ones writing them either to lampoon Democrats or to spotlight them as proof of “wokeness.” But again, these are not campaign emails, and I’m far out of campaign world for the most part.

But in doing this version of a check and in my understanding of how American politics can move forward in a more functional way, I agree we need to get away from what Third Way calls “the eggshell dance of political correctness.” People and politicians should be willing to adapt words when they don’t land and should be open to trying out new terms that capture novel experiences/problems that we need to deal with.

But as long as Republicans can keep defining Democrats by terms Democrats themselves rarely use, and everyone comes to believe this through repetition is a much bigger challenge for the impressions of the Democratic Party than any lefty words they might on occasion.

I’m honestly not sure what to do about the general 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. But one thing that could help a little is for organizations that are supposed to be helping the Democratic Party to stop circulating lies about what Democratic politicians are saying to help the media portray Democrats as out-of-touch elitists.