It would be a huge step forward for Democrats and for general clarity in political writing if these terms went away. These came mostly from academic hothouses.
Replies
They forgot woke. Actually, the academics among us, be they men or women, need to stop inventing new words that are easy targets for weaponization. What has it got us? Look where we are. Look where we are! We have a regime that emulates the Third Reich in every way imaginable. Need to focus…
aug 24, 2025, 8:23 pm • 3 0 • view
You do know how to stir the pot!
aug 24, 2025, 1:27 pm • 0 0 • view
And what words are you proposing we use instead?
aug 24, 2025, 12:21 am • 3 0 • view
Think you might need to touch some grass if this is the solution to Democrats winning elections
aug 24, 2025, 4:59 pm • 23 1 • view
Also “These come from academic hothouses” 🤣🤣🤣🤣 Who funds third way?
aug 24, 2025, 5:05 pm • 14 1 • view
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aug 24, 2025, 5:27 pm • 13 1 • view
bsky.app/profile/just...
aug 23, 2025, 9:28 pm • 6 0 • view
Tom. You and Democrats like you have been bullied into believing this Republican propaganda. I’d like you to explain, why it makes you feel diminished because behind the language are solid democratic values. It’s an important point. Republicans are laughing at you and you don’t like that?
aug 24, 2025, 1:18 pm • 14 0 • view
As a Democrat, I'd really like it if people who are saying we need to stop saying words could actually identify elected democrats that are actually saying them. I must be missing it.
aug 23, 2025, 6:51 pm • 2,279 46 • view
The list is in Sidney Sweeney's jeans Because those forbidden words have the same stench of made up right-wing BS as that commercial, or cracker barrel or any of the other made shit that they start.
aug 24, 2025, 1:01 pm • 3 0 • view
At this point the chuds are just inventing problems to go after, all of this is their equivalent of “manspreading”. Name two purple-district Dem electeds who have ever used even one of these terms.
aug 24, 2025, 3:30 pm • 0 0 • view
Amy McGrath in KY tried to be a centrist against McConnell, and had her ass handed to her. If you give voters a Republican and a Repub lite to choose from, they will pick the real thing.
aug 24, 2025, 12:15 pm • 12 0 • view
Thank you. Sure, there are some language police online, but they aren’t elected officials or legit Democratic candidates. This is the game the legacy media plays with us: pin anything done by any non-conservative on “the Democrats” — the convenient catchall boogeyman for a whole class of pundits.
aug 24, 2025, 4:17 am • 19 2 • view
As an independent, I love how the folks that've been responding to posts like this over the last two days always make it about *elected* democrats (unlike the original posters) like somehow those elected democrats aren't representing the rest of you and are therefore inextricably linked.
aug 23, 2025, 7:07 pm • 3 0 • view
Because it's in the context of winning elections. I fail to see how some academic vernacular that elected officials *don't use* is some how causing democrats to not get elected. It's almost as if something else is going on....
aug 23, 2025, 7:25 pm • 22 0 • view
I'll bet you *did* see how some rank and file GOP'ers doin' racist stuff, even if (in the past, at least) most elected GOP officials didn't, was an understandable reason for folks to think twice about voting for them. Conceptually its the same, even though one is worse than the other.
aug 23, 2025, 8:29 pm • 4 0 • view
“Nutpicking” is a good term. Both sides engage in it.
aug 23, 2025, 8:46 pm • 2 0 • view
Mostly fair, I think. I'm a huge French fan. I *do* think a critical mass of nuts can exist on a certain "topic" on one side or the other where its no longer unfair to point at them and be like "Are you guys gonna do somethin' about these folks, or what?" I'm an even bigger Reagan fan than French,
aug 23, 2025, 10:07 pm • 2 0 • view
but, as the leader of the GOP in that era, the only complaint I'm willing to listen to about him is over his "Big Tent" approach. There were definitely folks in that tent that shoulda been exiled to outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
aug 23, 2025, 10:07 pm • 1 0 • view
Everyone who knows a Republican has heard them be unapologetically racist.
aug 23, 2025, 11:22 pm • 0 0 • view
Let’s take a look at Republican advocates and their word usage. Charlie Kirk, Nick Fuentes, Hegseth reposting his desire to remove 19th amendment. They’re just words that seem to TRIGGER maga…. 🙄
aug 23, 2025, 7:13 pm • 8 0 • view
Yeah, they're definitely worse. Just tryina help you folks be better. Still votin' fer yer guys though.
aug 23, 2025, 8:22 pm • 3 0 • view
Why are you thinking that only elected Democrats matter? Stephen Miller, Charlie Kirk, Laura Loomer, none of these people are elected. Do you think that what they say doesn't matter too?
aug 24, 2025, 12:30 am • 5 0 • view
I would like for Democrats to refrain from needlessly alienating persuadable voters (these words would do that), but seriously, as you say, who are the office seekers in purple places who talk like this?
aug 23, 2025, 7:57 pm • 10 0 • view
You are so right. Straw man arguments that take on a life of their own, thanks to media laziness.
aug 23, 2025, 6:58 pm • 583 3 • view
It's not just about elected officials. It's about how we, as progressives, communicate our values. Using jargon and academic lingo is often a kind of in-group signaling at the expense of being more broadly persuasive.
aug 24, 2025, 4:48 pm • 40 0 • view
I'd argue that it's way more effective, for instance, to say "We have to help the homeless" than "We must address the unhoused." Stuff like that.
aug 24, 2025, 4:48 pm • 51 0 • view
How about we have to help the unhoused?
aug 24, 2025, 5:39 pm • 27 0 • view
OH FOR FUCKS SAKE!!!! Are you kidding me?? SEMANTICS??! THAT'S your biggest concern??
aug 24, 2025, 8:35 pm • 5 1 • view
I used to volunteer at a shelter and never once heard anyone refer to themselves as unhoused. What they feel is a *homeless. The physical body is unhoused but the human being is *homeless.
aug 24, 2025, 9:44 pm • 1 0 • view
Ok, let’s hear your argument
aug 24, 2025, 9:22 pm • 0 0 • view
Jason Crow - a sensible man! - sponsored this, which is a nice bill but right outta the bucket, that title... crow.house.gov/media/press-...
aug 24, 2025, 9:24 pm • 11 0 • view
On the bright side, it's a great bill with bipartisan support.
aug 24, 2025, 9:45 pm • 0 0 • view
It is, but if you want to see it on Fox as "government waste from crazy libs," that title was perfect
aug 24, 2025, 9:47 pm • 1 0 • view
I NEED TO BREAK IN HERE-Am I the only one who thinks those boxes being carried out of Bolton's house had the same look and feel as an empty milk carton?Like when you think it's full but when you go to pick it up it practically flies you backwards?The alleged Bolton boxes looked brand new & unused!
aug 24, 2025, 9:58 pm • 0 0 • view
Perhaps a few Fox viewers would be on board with keeping people and their pets together. I do agree about some of the terminology. I'm a lifelong Dem and have look up some of the meanings.
aug 24, 2025, 9:54 pm • 0 0 • view
Wait! I thought only activists used those terms and not actual politicians?
aug 25, 2025, 12:49 am • 1 0 • view
I want a constitutional amendment that bans the use of acronyms in statute titles.
aug 24, 2025, 9:30 pm • 11 0 • view
Public health degree here, been dealing with name changing for 50 years. First we replaced the clap with VD. Then VD became STD. Then it became STI. No matter what you call them, someone will say “that’s offensive” Today I saw “differently compromised” being used instead of immune compromised.
aug 24, 2025, 9:07 pm • 5 0 • view
Perfect
aug 24, 2025, 9:09 pm • 1 0 • view
As long as we don't forget the reasons we switched from homeless to unhoused I guess. But I think our real problem is that historically the GOP have so many resources to overwhelm our side with propaganda. We only have people power so whatever we do we have to do together.
aug 24, 2025, 6:57 pm • 3 0 • view
"we switched" Who is "we"?
aug 24, 2025, 8:44 pm • 0 0 • view
I agree. But we really have to be aware of meta-communication, you know? The really important thing is to get these fascists out and get policies that help people in place. If we have to use a little bit of archaic language to do that, we got to be okay with it, you know?
aug 24, 2025, 8:35 pm • 0 0 • view
We're not trying to communicate "I'm better than you," but that's what voters sometimes hear. It's so important to be aware of that.
aug 24, 2025, 8:35 pm • 0 0 • view
It's arcane, not archaic, and it's one of the things which drove otherwise-sensible voters into Trump's arms.
aug 24, 2025, 8:37 pm • 0 0 • view
No, I meant "archaic." "Homeless" is a bit old-fashioned next to "unhoused." Arcane language is what we should avoid.
aug 24, 2025, 8:41 pm • 1 0 • view
"Homeless" is not a tiny bit archaic. Words don't become "archaic" when 75% of the people are still using them and most don't even know the arcane new word. Heck, our extremely well-educated president was using the word frequently during his presidency (9 years ago). Y'all need to get out more.
aug 24, 2025, 9:14 pm • 0 0 • view
I'm arguing for using the older words
aug 24, 2025, 9:16 pm • 1 0 • view
When I was a kid, they were "bums".
aug 24, 2025, 9:18 pm • 0 0 • view
Agreed. I misread your post. Apologies.
aug 24, 2025, 9:30 pm • 1 0 • view
No worries. I appreciate the apology, thank you.
aug 24, 2025, 9:42 pm • 2 0 • view
I'll give you an example.... the backlash during COVID whenever Anthony Fauci said "Latin-X." I heard such BACKLASH from the Latino community who were just angered by it.
aug 23, 2025, 7:43 pm • 11 0 • view
OK, that was like 5 years ago and was extensively discussed at the time. And I haven't seen anyone say "Latinx" much at all since. Anything recent? Fauci was also a civil servent and not an elected official.
aug 23, 2025, 7:46 pm • 36 0 • view
But he was using the term because he was afraid of being attacked? Trying to make sense ir, I feel like, while it's not most of the Democrat pols using the terms, it the closest activists to them calling for their use? There's a reason I could guess most for the words on the list before I saw it.
aug 23, 2025, 8:09 pm • 4 0 • view
Latinx was coined by individuals who wanted a way to be referred to without gendered adjectives in their own language.
aug 24, 2025, 4:26 am • 15 0 • view
It is not used in Mexico.
aug 24, 2025, 5:09 am • 2 0 • view
Latin was right there.
aug 24, 2025, 5:23 am • 4 0 • view
Like the use of “ə” in Italian to un-gender the plurals “i” and “e”? I think it won’t survive, Italian language is too much gendered. But I say: let the nature of languages work. In the meantime, I ask the preferred pronouns and talk and write accordingly. Or keep a vague approach, it can be done.
aug 24, 2025, 10:57 am • 0 0 • view
We used Latinx in my Episcopal Church for a while until the Latino members asked us to stop using it. It may be a generational thing. The point I remember them saying is, x is not even a letter in our alphabet. What they really dislike is "Hispanic"
aug 24, 2025, 4:31 am • 19 0 • view
It’s great that there was this conversation so that people could make their views heard
aug 24, 2025, 4:32 am • 1 0 • view
Yes, I work around a lot of Indigenous people, and 1) I learned to ask them; and 2) they don't always say the same thing!! Some of them think about stuff like his harder than others. Also there are the things that they say but that we should not. It's so much more satisfying to wonder and ask.
aug 24, 2025, 4:37 am • 5 0 • view
Honestly, avoiding referring to all people from Latin and South America and of Hispanic descent with one word is probably best.
aug 24, 2025, 4:52 am • 2 0 • view
Yup. Or like, oh you speak Spanish, let's get a mariachi band.
aug 24, 2025, 6:41 am • 0 0 • view
I was aware that it shows up in some of the place names I've been to in Mexico. I'm just telling you what I was told. I have studied Spanish, but I didn't think about it hard, cause I was talking to a native speaker.
aug 24, 2025, 9:51 pm • 0 0 • view
Mexico
aug 24, 2025, 12:24 pm • 0 0 • view
Right, I guess he meant in common parlance? I have been to Ixtapa too. This is what he told me, he was a native speaker.
aug 24, 2025, 9:52 pm • 0 0 • view
In Spanish X is pronounced like an H, maybe that’s what they meant.
aug 25, 2025, 1:51 am • 1 0 • view
That's it I bet, meaning when I say Latino, I am pronouncing it like they do. But when I say Latinx I am pronouncing it like *I* do.
aug 25, 2025, 2:42 am • 0 0 • view
Lah-tinks?
aug 25, 2025, 12:27 pm • 1 0 • view
How do you even pronounce “Latinx” in Spanish?
aug 24, 2025, 12:19 pm • 1 0 • view
I have never met a person who wanted to be referred to in this way. It screams "made up by white people"
aug 24, 2025, 6:08 am • 2 0 • view
I thought “Latine” was the preferred term, though?
aug 24, 2025, 4:30 am • 3 0 • view
There’s different preferences in every community. This article lays out some of the nuance and different opinions and perspectives around any word that purports to describe so many people at once in case it helps. www.motherjones.com/media/2019/0...
aug 24, 2025, 4:47 am • 5 1 • view
So to me it seems like the actual best practice is “just refer to people the way they like on a case by case basis, be humble if they tell you something different, and try to not be dogmatic or prescriptive” or, put even more simply, “let’s just not be assholes”
aug 24, 2025, 4:54 am • 7 0 • view
The hilarious thing is that you could be serious.
aug 24, 2025, 4:42 am • 0 0 • view
Hilarious in what sense? I personally don’t care, but I just remember a lot of the backlash to “latinx” being from Latin people who were like, “um, we didn’t pick that”
aug 24, 2025, 4:44 am • 2 0 • view
I live in Portland where latine is real. Add any letter but o or a and they fall into orgasmic bliss. They being almost entirely white progressives.
aug 24, 2025, 4:48 am • 0 0 • view
Yeah see that’s why I was rebutting the “x”, i know a lot of latin folks in like, theatre, and most of them use the “e” if they use anything at all, which is where we agree, it’s a largely extrapolated “solution” that didn’t really originate from the group itself.
aug 24, 2025, 4:52 am • 3 0 • view
I live in a heavily Latino area and every Latino I asked about it found it offensive because it felt to them like a bunch of white college kids was criticizing their language and telling them it was wrong. That is a direct quote from a friend, but others I’ve talked to about said similar things. 1/2
aug 24, 2025, 4:45 am • 10 1 • view
Mike Madrid and Chuck Rocha have spoken on this extensively over the years. After asking my friends and getting their opinions, I quit using the term.
aug 24, 2025, 4:47 am • 3 0 • view
That sounds like the right way to incorporate the views of the people directly impacted.
aug 24, 2025, 4:49 am • 2 0 • view
I really hadn’t considered it as an affront to their culture by criticizing their language until I discussed with so many. Similar discussion years ago on the term African-American vs. Black. I was surprised at those answers, too. But I get that now. I’ll never assume things like that again.
aug 24, 2025, 4:55 am • 2 0 • view
Accepted terminology also changes over time, which is why Tom’s list is ridiculous.
aug 24, 2025, 5:08 am • 2 0 • view
That list didn’t come from Tom at all. He just shared it. But that same thing has also been reflected in focus groups. As one commenter put it, many of those words are good in a grant proposal or an academic setting, but often come off as cold or removed. Sometimes simpler words are better.
aug 24, 2025, 5:12 am • 6 0 • view
Actually "cold and removed" is the best argument against theses words I've heard! Even if you know what they mean, or kind of know the term, they don't have much visceral resonance. I argued that "food insecurity" is a pretty normal phrase but it doesn't pack much of a punch.
aug 24, 2025, 4:21 pm • 3 0 • view
What percentage of Latino/Latina/etc people use LatinX to refer to their selves? And what percentage of people who use LatinX are non-Latin versus Latin?
aug 24, 2025, 4:30 am • 2 0 • view
My point is it’s not an academic term being foisted on the population. If people decide to use it or not over time that is all part of how living language works.
aug 24, 2025, 4:41 am • 4 0 • view
Yeah, because academics also knew that it was a stupid, paternalistic term that didn’t even bother to engage with the language it was attempting to “fix”
aug 24, 2025, 3:25 pm • 0 0 • view
Bullshit. I work in education and I've been instructed by county administrators to use that term, which has been a point of contention.
aug 24, 2025, 11:51 am • 0 0 • view
Okay fine. I remember seeing a "Latinx Employee Appreciation Month" sign on a Macy's in Portland in 2019. The large majority of actual Latino people in actual America in 2019 didn't use the term and didn't like it. It *WAS* foisted on a population who did not want it.
aug 24, 2025, 5:02 am • 2 0 • view
I think what’s being missed here is that I was refuting Tom’s claim that these terms originate in academic ivory towers. I have no interest in maintaining the use of latinx in unless someone tells me that’s what they prefer.
aug 24, 2025, 5:06 am • 2 0 • view
In the late 2010s, many people and institutions with power in the US decided that they WOULD use this term all over the place, with seemingly total ignorance and incuriosity about whether the people it referred to liked the term. I'm glad you don't do that, but MANY others did.
aug 24, 2025, 5:24 am • 0 0 • view
I remember hearing a presentation by an MD. It was clear that she knew basically nothing about Latino culture in the US; she mispronounced a few very basic Spanish words. But she used "Latinx" a bunch of times, in a way that suggested she was confident that it was the RIGHT word to use.
aug 24, 2025, 5:29 am • 0 0 • view
Where I live "Latinx" is considered insulting, paternalistic at best. Where is it I live? Mexico City
aug 24, 2025, 6:07 pm • 1 0 • view
…by affluent white kids in private colleges who promise they have Tejano friends and it’s ok.
aug 24, 2025, 6:54 am • 1 0 • view
... in a language that is gendered. Really - this was coined by a *few* activists, and the Hispanic community at large roundly rejected it.
aug 24, 2025, 4:30 am • 16 0 • view
It feels like your issue is more about the consequences of saying something and being perceived to be a bigot, which is about how we build community and maintain relationships even when we don’t agree with each other 100%. I think that’s an important thing to think about.
aug 24, 2025, 4:36 am • 1 0 • view
I can’t make any sense of you. Nothing in her reply indicated that anyone was viewed as a bigot. It seems like some used “Latinx” and a most Latino/Hispanic people in the group discouraged it. Your circular, rambling reply with the “bigot” buzzword is an example of what Dems should not be doing.
aug 24, 2025, 4:57 am • 1 0 • view
Not really (though I'm all for building community ..) It's about terms that originate with a small group of people, pushed out to to communities (and the wider public) that don't want to take up the term for any number of valid reasons. Like the very un-Spanish "Latinx".
aug 24, 2025, 4:54 am • 2 0 • view
Yes. Latino people I know and talk to overwhelmingly despise the term, and see it as insulting that outsiders with no knowledge of the Spanish language adopted it. (I'd be pissed too if American society decided something was problematic about the word "Jew" and we need to be called "Jxws" instead.)
aug 24, 2025, 4:58 am • 9 0 • view
Yeah, this 👇
aug 24, 2025, 5:16 am • 7 0 • view
Twelve of them?
aug 24, 2025, 4:40 am • 1 0 • view
Not a Democrat.
aug 24, 2025, 4:37 am • 1 0 • view
It just takes one Democrat out of millions to say a "forbidden" word and the media/critic/consultant class has fresh meat to feed on for weeks.
aug 23, 2025, 9:13 pm • 51 2 • view
Except it's unfortunately not just one out of millions. It's also our friends. It's also social media. Most people just don't have the time to care about what the latest accepted/correct term is. And don't appreciate being dog-piled for not using it. 1/2
aug 23, 2025, 9:41 pm • 8 0 • view
We all know when offense is meant, and when it isn't. "Bless your heart" in the South can be a sincere expression of sympathy, or a very sarcastic dismissal of you. It's not the words that make the difference between intent to offend, and not. 2/2
aug 23, 2025, 9:41 pm • 5 0 • view
The Democrat party cannot and should not be held responsible for every random commenting the internet. We have a party literally supporting fascism, get some perspective.
aug 24, 2025, 1:47 pm • 19 1 • view
I have perspective. Say "pregnant woman" in a high-vis thread and count the seconds before you get called a TERF and put on a block list. Nobody is saying that the GOP is fine. They're saying that they're winning elections. The link was a report BY Dems, to Dems.
aug 24, 2025, 3:33 pm • 4 0 • view
It's not a question of whether elected Democrats are using the words. It's that they have become part of the lexicon in a way that most people (i) think is just weird (incarcerated people? the unhoused?) and (ii) associate with Democrats. Contributes to the view that the party is out of touch
aug 24, 2025, 12:00 am • 5 0 • view
You must be blind and dead or just stupid.
aug 24, 2025, 12:20 pm • 1 0 • view
Yes x 10,000. Republicans were the ones talking about trans issues last election. They see stuff from academia and then apply it to all Democrats.
aug 23, 2025, 7:51 pm • 20 0 • view
Why limit it to "elected democrats"?? It's rife in interviews of activists and advocates on a wide array of subjects. And folks actually do get corrected on this stuff. I've been taken to task for >>gasp<< saying "homeless".
aug 23, 2025, 7:06 pm • 16 0 • view
Because it is in the context of winning elections. People not running for office are not asking for votes.
aug 23, 2025, 7:25 pm • 19 0 • view
Actually, it would help us win elections of there weren't roadblocks to talking to people in general about issues. If a pol in office proposes a policy, and all people get about it are advocates and activists interviews about it talking gibberish about it, it doesn't work.
aug 23, 2025, 7:29 pm • 9 0 • view
I don't think I can disagree with your general point. It is up to the pol to sell the policy. And Democrats are generally terrible at that, I agree! Not sure what that has to do with lists of random verboten words identified by right-wing grifters that get pegged to elected Democrats not using them.
aug 23, 2025, 7:34 pm • 13 0 • view
This "elected Democrats" thing is a dodge. People are encountering this in everyday life. When they fill out a medical history, when they apply to college, when they turn on the local news and someone is saying "the new OB-Gyn department will serve local pregnant people ..."
aug 23, 2025, 7:36 pm • 10 0 • view
It's not a dodge! It's the central problem of this discourse! Why is the language on a college application a problem of someone running for Congress?
aug 23, 2025, 7:40 pm • 9 0 • view
Pregnant people is just plain ridiculous,followed closely by unhoused.
aug 24, 2025, 12:12 am • 2 0 • view
Why is being more accurate and inclusive ridiculous?
aug 24, 2025, 4:24 am • 8 0 • view
And in normal conversation. I've been corrected on "homeless" and told I've been insulting for not using "unhoused" This stuff has infiltrated the social milleau in maddening ways - and they're MEANT to do that because that's what advocates want - everyone use their devised terms for their reasons
aug 23, 2025, 7:38 pm • 10 0 • view
Some people are assholes it's true. How is that a problem for Democrats?
aug 23, 2025, 7:41 pm • 11 0 • view
And I'm legitimately trying to understand what the issue is. I do not see it. Perhaps that's my failing.
aug 23, 2025, 7:42 pm • 2 0 • view
So there's no reason for the term "unhoused" it's not meant to be used instead of "homeless". If a term is said to be preferred you really don't think people will take that to heart and tell others to use it? You're being purposely obtuse, I suspect.
aug 23, 2025, 7:45 pm • 3 0 • view
Because assholes vote.
aug 23, 2025, 8:33 pm • 1 0 • view
I can 100% assure you that folks who are not terminally online for politics do not run into these words. I know many of them. This is literally about an incredibly small sub-section of folks who follow political topics online, which further exposes how utterly stupid it is.
aug 24, 2025, 1:51 pm • 2 0 • view
Then it should be easy to abandon these terms hm? I live a real life too (it's not just you) and i have encountered a lot of for example in monthly observing my county legislature as a member of LWV. Thats where I was corrected re "homeless" Interacting with medical care, applying for jobs too.
aug 24, 2025, 1:58 pm • 0 0 • view
Again, people are explaining to you that the Dem candidates aren't actually putting up roadblocks. You're trying to hold the party accountable for everything anyone who votes for them says. It's stupid. Stop listening to folks who lost their own party to Trump.
aug 24, 2025, 1:49 pm • 1 0 • view
The secdef has white nationalist tattoos and a man with a key to the WH does Nazi salutes. Maybe that’s more important than words no one ever hears unless conservative bring them up to make people pearl clutch.
aug 23, 2025, 11:56 pm • 96 2 • view
Yes. It IS more important. It's much more important. But in order to stop these jerks, the opposition has to learn to talk to people in ways that make sense to them. They have to give a clear alternative. Some Dems and academics and cultural commentators are good at it. More of them need to learn.
aug 24, 2025, 3:16 am • 6 0 • view
So the American people are so wildly stupid and mentally deficient that they can't adapt new terminology like humans have always done throughout human history is your argument? That's a pretty freaking elitist and condescending claim to make.
aug 24, 2025, 12:37 pm • 20 0 • view
From their POV it's either an assertion of elitist power over them, or a form of elitist condescension, for you to try to force your words on them. Why don't you use their words? Surely you're intelligent and mentally capable enough to adapt to speaking in terminology that is most commonly used.
aug 24, 2025, 9:20 pm • 2 0 • view
a response 🧵 bsky.app/profile/jess...
aug 24, 2025, 9:30 pm • 2 0 • view
I don't say that we should ignore them at all.
aug 24, 2025, 9:39 pm • 0 0 • view
Thread was response to someone else, but read the thread as it is about much more the the first post directed at Tom.
aug 24, 2025, 9:42 pm • 0 0 • view
Yes, got that.
aug 24, 2025, 9:45 pm • 0 0 • view
No, that is not my argument.
aug 24, 2025, 1:08 pm • 3 0 • view
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jNU...
aug 24, 2025, 12:14 pm • 0 0 • view
It would be a good step for Republicans not to elect and shield traffickers of our teens. It would be a good step for Republicans not to smear the Capitol walls with feces. It would be a good step if Republicans stopped breaking into Dem lawmakers’ homes and murdering them.
aug 24, 2025, 11:37 am • 25 3 • view
As usual, the Democratic Party is held responsible for actions (or in this case, words) used by some randos on Twitter, while nobody asks Republicans about why they support a fascist President.
aug 23, 2025, 7:06 pm • 29 0 • view
Understanding that people are treated differently depending on who they are is the first step to political enlightenment.
aug 23, 2025, 7:46 pm • 4 0 • view
Are these the same words that the Trump Administration banned?
aug 23, 2025, 7:04 pm • 10 0 • view
Be nice if "elites" would also be a thing of the past. What exactly is an "elite"? Someone like me who lives on the East Coast in a blue state? I don't know about you, but I am far from being an "elite". I am retired, drive a Ford and still like to read a local newspaper and wear sweats.
aug 23, 2025, 7:25 pm • 1 0 • view
Please don't use the word "privilege," because I am a white man of privilege, and it makes me uncomfortable.
aug 24, 2025, 5:16 am • 47 2 • view
Coming next week: "Don't use the word 'Authoritarianism,' also 'don't call them Nazis.'"
aug 24, 2025, 3:59 am • 164 5 • view
He already did that one.
aug 24, 2025, 7:17 am • 4 0 • view
Don't use the word "academic" or "education" it makes people feel dumb. Don't use the word "bipartisan" because Trump has made the word verboten. Don't use word "verboten" because its in a different language. The free speech warriors sure do love to police their Newspeak.
aug 24, 2025, 10:53 am • 88 4 • view
Policing language seems wrong
aug 24, 2025, 10:41 pm • 4 0 • view
It would be a huge step forward for truth if the press stopped calling Trump president and routinely called him dictator, white supremacist, felon, liar, etc.
aug 24, 2025, 3:40 pm • 10 0 • view
No Democrats use the term “critical theory”. Actually there are a *lot* of these terms that actual real-world Democrats don’t use, but “critical theory” in particular is only (mis)used by the right.
aug 23, 2025, 10:15 pm • 5 0 • view
I just think republicans will find new words to hate.
aug 24, 2025, 8:50 pm • 11 0 • view
It's pathetic and beyond discouraging that we think we have to be stupid and lack empathy to be elected.
aug 24, 2025, 11:57 am • 24 2 • view
Really disappointing that you think that there shouldn’t be discussion about food insecurity.
aug 24, 2025, 3:03 am • 109 0 • view
Where did he say no one should ever again discuss people not having enough to eat?
aug 24, 2025, 3:37 am • 4 0 • view
What words would you use when discussing it? “Food insecurity” doesn’t necessarily mean not having enough to eat, so that doesn’t work. The point is that you can’t discuss it if you don’t have words for it
aug 24, 2025, 4:14 am • 59 0 • view
There are better words that focus on the human being. Work smarter. Win elections. That’s the goal. Win elections. But, if Dems want to cling to their 30 year low approval rating and a 64% unfavorable view from voters then never course correcting is a great way to do that.
aug 24, 2025, 2:31 pm • 3 1 • view
I think he's saying Dems should use plain talk like "going hungry" or "don't know where next meal will come from" or "struggle to feed kids" instead.
aug 24, 2025, 7:55 am • 0 0 • view
I first heard “patriarchy” from 1970s feminists, who were activists not academics,
aug 23, 2025, 8:01 pm • 35 0 • view
MAGA uses "triggered" all the time.
aug 24, 2025, 11:20 pm • 4 0 • view
The ratio of the frequency of use of terms the right-wing claims Democrats use to the actual frequency of use of those terms by Democrats is about 10,000 to 1. (edited for clarity)
aug 23, 2025, 9:20 pm • 11 0 • view
While I don’t completely disagree, it might be helpful to note most of these terms ARE disappearing, extremely quickly, due to heavy-handed government censorship
aug 23, 2025, 9:45 pm • 3 0 • view
The fact that Third Way is prioritizing the terms as the problem, rather than the censorship, is a tad enraging
aug 23, 2025, 9:46 pm • 6 0 • view
This post definitely stirred things up 😁
aug 23, 2025, 9:47 pm • 0 0 • view
I bet if we stop using the hurty words then the fascists will stop doing fascism.
aug 23, 2025, 11:29 pm • 331 12 • view
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
aug 24, 2025, 2:59 pm • 4 0 • view
No if you win elections by stopping being stupid you can have more power. Stop being a fucking idiot.
aug 24, 2025, 12:27 pm • 1 0 • view
So republicans are entitled to scream about how the blood of immigrants is poisoning the nation, but the media clutches its collective pearls when a liberal talks about inclusion.
aug 24, 2025, 2:19 pm • 6 0 • view
Do democrat politicians really use these words though? I think that's the question
aug 24, 2025, 1:31 pm • 17 0 • view
Yes and the whole ecosystem does also.
aug 24, 2025, 2:07 pm • 1 0 • view
The internet isn’t real life.
aug 24, 2025, 2:17 pm • 4 0 • view
No. As it turns out. They barely use those terms at all.
aug 24, 2025, 4:14 pm • 6 0 • view
I, for one, am shocked that conservatives are just making things up to be offended about!
aug 24, 2025, 5:18 pm • 4 0 • view
Here is an entire analysis showing this issue is made up: dcinboxinsights.substack.com/p/was-it-som...
aug 24, 2025, 1:15 pm • 85 8 • view
“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.”
aug 24, 2025, 11:30 pm • 3 1 • view
I’d think that the party that’s about to gash snap would want ‘food insecurity’ to go away as well. So that one should be easy given the subset of Americans who are actually food insecure. Maybe we can call it what it is: fucking hungry all the time
aug 23, 2025, 7:10 pm • 1 0 • view
How about a big ol FOAD, Nazi enabler
aug 24, 2025, 7:51 pm • 7 0 • view
I don't think I've ever in my life used any of those words or terms.
aug 24, 2025, 12:32 pm • 1 0 • view
Seems like you live in quite a bit of privilege yourself that you’ve never had on occasion to say these words.
aug 24, 2025, 12:44 pm • 17 0 • view
🤷 I'm also not a Democrat.
aug 24, 2025, 12:47 pm • 0 0 • view
The revolution will not spare you.
aug 24, 2025, 12:49 pm • 8 0 • view
I've got a question for you. Why do you think only Democrats hate Trump?
aug 24, 2025, 12:51 pm • 0 0 • view
Not what I said at all. Only that this third way nonsense is trying to erase LBGTQ people with Overton-window-shifting cultural centrism. I will not go back into the closet.
aug 24, 2025, 12:53 pm • 10 1 • view
I absolutely support LGBTQ rights and people. But I am frustrated that Democrats don't seem to understand how to win elections. That's my goal. Winning elections so you do not have to go back into the closet. We are on a dangerous path and we need to figure out how to change it.
aug 24, 2025, 12:57 pm • 0 0 • view
We don’t do that by policing the language persecuted minorities use to describe our experiences. That’s called giving the GOO what they want. That’s called giving in. That’s called shifting the Overton window even further to the right. Time to go way left. Medicare for all.
aug 24, 2025, 1:00 pm • 4 0 • view
Republicans are winning only because they cheated. Not because of anything their opposition has said or not said. They’ve been cheating for over 30 years.
aug 24, 2025, 3:54 pm • 2 0 • view
💯💯💯💯💯
aug 24, 2025, 6:29 pm • 0 0 • view
Please list your strategies for winning elections. Include election interference.
aug 24, 2025, 6:29 pm • 0 0 • view
You may not have said it but you definitely implied it. Apparently you think only people who identify as "Democrats" are allies.
aug 24, 2025, 12:55 pm • 0 0 • view
Regardless of the accuracy of what you assume to be my innermost thoughts, what does that have to do with anything? The United States is a patriarchal, heteronormative country with to many privileged people who would prefer to pretend that the rest of the world doesn’t exist.
aug 24, 2025, 12:58 pm • 0 0 • view
John you are absolutely confusing the use of certain words as policy statements. You do understand the concept of strategy?
aug 24, 2025, 1:01 pm • 0 0 • view
Centrism doesn’t win elections.
aug 24, 2025, 1:03 pm • 0 0 • view
Yes. And I understand what happens when you give up policy to conservatives. They call that the new normal. I am not going to give up my rights or my visibility in order to win bigot votes. Racing to the middle is always a disaster.
aug 24, 2025, 1:03 pm • 0 0 • view
No. You assumed that about me. I never said the word. I do know that anyone who ever supported Trump is a traitor to the country though.
aug 24, 2025, 12:56 pm • 1 0 • view
I said I was not a Democrat and then you implied that I was not an ally. Otherwise please explain "the revolution will not save you"? Did that not imply that I was not part of it? Did you not come to that conclusion based on me not being a Democrat?
aug 24, 2025, 12:59 pm • 0 0 • view
If you are telling LGBTQ people to stop using the term “LGBTQ,” then you are not an ally.
aug 24, 2025, 1:01 pm • 1 0 • view
😂 well that's good because I will be part of it.
aug 24, 2025, 12:50 pm • 1 0 • view
I am quite curious about what part you believe you will be playing.
aug 24, 2025, 9:13 pm • 1 0 • view
That’s good to hear. Learn to check your privilege.
aug 24, 2025, 12:51 pm • 5 0 • view
There's that word again.
aug 24, 2025, 12:52 pm • 0 0 • view
Yes. It’s a word in the English language. Here, I’ll use it in a sentence for you. “When someone is used to privilege, equality feels like oppression.
aug 24, 2025, 12:54 pm • 15 0 • view
🎯🎯🎯
aug 24, 2025, 9:10 pm • 1 0 • view
Food insecurity?! What should we call it when children are hungry because their parents can’t afford to buy healthy food for them?
aug 24, 2025, 5:00 am • 15 0 • view
Oh yes. These words are what did them.
aug 23, 2025, 7:49 pm • 1 0 • view
lol. Hardly anybody uses them (except LB….). The GOP amplifies some obscure academic using a term, and guys like you fall for the bait every time. Even when centrist Dems like Tim Ryan pretend to be GOP lite, they lose to real GOP right wingers like Vance.
aug 24, 2025, 11:58 am • 8 0 • view
Actually let's make a list of terms "centrists" should avoid. I'll start with "academic hothouse," a pseudo-clever jab to affirm one is willing to join the fascists in dismantling the system of higher education that you've already taken advantage of. Clever centrists are going to get us all killed.
aug 24, 2025, 9:21 pm • 37 2 • view
this is what third way, who are republicans, say we say
aug 24, 2025, 6:02 pm • 27 0 • view
Followed.
aug 24, 2025, 6:21 pm • 0 0 • view
Eliminating words doesn't eliminate the concepts.
aug 24, 2025, 3:43 am • 71 5 • view
Exactly. They say to stop using these words, but what they really mean is stop talking about these ideas.
aug 24, 2025, 6:01 pm • 14 3 • view
Yep, kind of like if we stop testing for Covid, we won’t have as many cases…
aug 25, 2025, 12:29 am • 2 0 • view
You forgot Latinx, a term that is hopefully dying on its own but should never be resurrected
aug 23, 2025, 7:03 pm • 7 1 • view
I'm deaf myself. I can speak but some people understand me and some not understand me. My speech isn't same as most people. It is easier for ME to pronounce homeless than unhoused.
aug 25, 2025, 12:49 am • 2 0 • view
Tom, I’m the mother of 2 adult trans people. The term cisgender is extremely helpful in discussions -it’s specific, clear, useful. There is no reason to be offended by it. I’m not going to stop using it because of fake culture wars nonsense.
aug 23, 2025, 7:14 pm • 221 6 • view
No one’s arguing that you shouldn’t use them in your own conversation. These people are arguing the Democrats should not use them as part of their discussions with people they’re trying to get votes from.
aug 23, 2025, 7:54 pm • 15 2 • view
They don’t. We’re being told they do by their opponents.
aug 24, 2025, 4:51 am • 30 0 • view
I think the problem is trying to micromanage every single conversation. The key is to be authentic. If you use these words then use them. If you don’t then don’t. The problem is when you try to “think tank” & “poll test” everything - that’s when you come across as fake which is much worse.
aug 25, 2025, 12:26 am • 0 0 • view
Then they will not get a vote from me. I want a fighter who doesn't cave to "think tanks" but speaks honestly and truthfully. I don't need a FOLLOWER ..... I'll vote for a LEADER.
aug 24, 2025, 8:59 pm • 4 0 • view
I have never seen a Dem politician use that term.
aug 24, 2025, 4:55 pm • 2 0 • view
Politicians need to be authentic, no need to parse every word they say.
aug 23, 2025, 9:25 pm • 67 0 • view
Exactly.
aug 25, 2025, 12:26 am • 0 0 • view
Things elected Democrats should really stop saying: “Our friends across the aisle” They should start saying “Republicans are why healthcare and housing cost too much.”
aug 24, 2025, 7:42 pm • 11 1 • view
Words and Phrases for Democrats to Avoid: EPSTEIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIN
aug 24, 2025, 7:52 pm • 1 0 • view
Be fluid in how you talk/write to align with the audiences you're trying to reach. This shouldn't be a hot take. I use different words when talking with my child vs writing in a formal report for work.
aug 24, 2025, 12:52 pm • 1 0 • view
Politicians AREN’T using those words, though. Which would mean that you’re asking everyone to police language, not just candidates from one party.
aug 24, 2025, 11:29 am • 15 0 • view
Perhaps using terms offensive to others isn't good if you then argue that terms used about certain other groups of people. (I am using you in the general sense). There are a lot of people on the left who will argue racism is wrong, then insult white people for being white, just being white.
aug 23, 2025, 7:20 pm • 1 0 • view
Or who will say misogyny is wrong, then saying sexist things about men in general. It's hypocritical and undermines the arguments made by such people that sexism and racism are wrong. It's self- defeating as a strategy.
aug 23, 2025, 7:22 pm • 1 0 • view
If you think that using specific words to talk about problems we need to solve is "offensive" then you've lost the plot. It's not hypocritical if we acknowledge harmful practices of oppressive groups and then that group gets ignorantly upset about it. That's their lack of education about the issue.
aug 24, 2025, 3:11 am • 16 0 • view
What a load of shit. These phrases aren't the problem. The problem is we have politicians not saying what we really need. 1) Healthcare for everyone. 2) affordable housing. 3) living wages. 4) affordable childcare 5) affordable energy and food
aug 23, 2025, 9:45 pm • 26 0 • view
Is 3rd way Israeli funded? Seems like trying to dilute left power into stupid policy discussions over minor issues really only benefits fascists and zionists. Isn't there a like cia pamplet from ww2 that explains how to grind things down in committees? This is that playbook word for word.
aug 25, 2025, 5:12 pm • 1 0 • view
What? These are terms used in queer and left discourse. They aren't going away Tom, and it's ridiculous to assert that they should or even can be discarded. Aren't you paid to think about this shit? Your book a few years ago made you seem sane, but you're cracking under authoritarianism.
aug 25, 2025, 4:40 pm • 7 0 • view
BS on what NOT to say. How about having an exciting new, hopeful vision for the future? A list of values? A new philosophy that embraces our humanity? Don’t know what that is? How about getting off their asses and getting out to LISTEN to their own constituents, develop a plan and goddamn deliver.
aug 24, 2025, 8:00 pm • 12 0 • view
So sensor? Naw bruh
aug 24, 2025, 6:20 pm • 4 0 • view
No, not sensor at all
aug 24, 2025, 8:52 pm • 0 0 • view
Weird how the word incel remains free.
aug 24, 2025, 2:03 pm • 49 4 • view
Or Basement Dwellers.
aug 24, 2025, 2:04 pm • 15 1 • view
GTFOH with this ignorant take.
aug 24, 2025, 2:05 pm • 53 1 • view
Its ignorant turtles all the way down
aug 24, 2025, 9:59 pm • 0 0 • view
Tom, I dislike many of these words too, but they don’t represent the language of a majority of Dems. Before your time, but I also disliked common hippie words like groovy, far out, dig it, man, peace, love, flower power, vibe, and vibrations. And they def did not get put on a list of “Dem words”
aug 24, 2025, 2:04 pm • 5 0 • view
I’m an older Dem and I’ve about had it with the LGBTQIA alphabet. Now I see it’s become 2SLGBTQIA, wtf? He has a valid point in some respects.
aug 24, 2025, 2:18 pm • 0 0 • view
Take a nap.
aug 24, 2025, 6:25 pm • 4 0 • view
The Third Way are right-wingers masquerading as centrist to amass power so the can enact right-wing policies.
aug 24, 2025, 4:40 pm • 23 2 • view
As long as I can stay woke.
aug 23, 2025, 10:54 pm • 1 0 • view
🙄
aug 26, 2025, 2:07 am • 1 0 • view
Why are we ignoring words and phrases used by the right? There are many slurs and absolutes on the lips of MAGA but for some reason Democrats have to "talk normal?"
aug 24, 2025, 2:14 pm • 28 1 • view
The r-slur comes to mind
aug 24, 2025, 2:16 pm • 8 0 • view
Helpful, since no actual Dem candidates in any even slightly competitive races say any of these.
aug 24, 2025, 10:47 pm • 5 1 • view
Ya think?
aug 23, 2025, 6:54 pm • 0 0 • view
Ok I'm about as far from the Right as I can get. I haven't heard some of these words used by anyone. And some I actually agree we shouldn't be using. "Un housed"? Always made me wonder how do these people define what a house is. I know someone who lives in a yurt. She calls it her house. Is it?
aug 24, 2025, 7:07 pm • 4 0 • view
You losers complain about words because you refuse any reality that doesn't prop up your idea of American identity. Fat rich fuck hates the term food insecurity because hunger is a foreign concept to his privileged ass.
aug 24, 2025, 4:53 am • 3 1 • view
It would be a huge step forward if Democrats stood up to actual fascism rather than talking about talking.
aug 24, 2025, 7:56 am • 46 2 • view
🎯
aug 24, 2025, 1:08 pm • 5 0 • view
Third way telling democrats what language not to use. Screw them.
aug 24, 2025, 8:32 pm • 11 2 • view
Tom. It’s worse than this. Dems are losing the #marijuana issue to Republicans. How does one do that?
aug 23, 2025, 7:01 pm • 0 0 • view
Sorry, I'm not interested in coddling self-appointed language police. Go and rethink yourself.
aug 24, 2025, 3:23 am • 93 1 • view
Whether or not it is fair, the Dems need to consider that in 2024 more voters saw Trump as moderate compared to Harris.
aug 23, 2025, 7:58 pm • 46 1 • view
And even if Dems don’t use these phrases that often, they are associated in the public mind with institutions that Dems control/predominate in. So when people are in a preachy sensitivity training, they think Democrats are at fault. Again, whether or not this is fair is kinda beside the point.
aug 23, 2025, 8:00 pm • 9 0 • view
But it does matter because if it’s not something Democratic politicians are actually saying, then even if it’s true that that weighs them down, it’s not something that can be changed by a decision in Washington.
aug 24, 2025, 7:04 pm • 1 0 • view
It can't be changed by a decision in DC but it's a symptom of a larger problem: the fact that the Democratic Party is the party of the highly educated professional class that created and spread this language in the institutions they predominate in.
aug 24, 2025, 7:07 pm • 1 0 • view
And we can analyze that and talk about the implications of that and how it came to be, sure. But if we’re discussing how to get better electoral outcomes, don’t you think it’s better to focus on the things that are actual choices, not the things that no leader could change even if they wanted to?
aug 24, 2025, 7:59 pm • 1 0 • view
Let’s do it all
aug 24, 2025, 8:03 pm • 1 0 • view
Sure. I’m just telling you, having traveled to towns in Pennsylvania seven times last year to canvass, called voters in every swing state, and grown up in a rural area, I don’t think the fact that Dems in universities sometimes use jargon was any kind of proximate cause for our electoral outcome.
aug 25, 2025, 7:55 pm • 2 0 • view
Actual choice they can make: fire all the consultants and pollsters. I’m not saying strategists can’t be useful… I’m saying the ones the Dem Party is currently relying on are crap.
aug 24, 2025, 8:06 pm • 2 0 • view
On that, at least, I think we all agree!
aug 24, 2025, 8:20 pm • 2 0 • view
Like, if a kid asks what he could have done differently after he got turned down when he asked someone to the prom, the first answer isn’t “Well you should have been taller. Fix that.” That doesn’t help them. This kind of internecine flagellation is a mug’s game, and a divisive one too.
aug 24, 2025, 7:59 pm • 0 0 • view
"Democrats need to toe the line on this fake problem that Republicans shoveled to their moronic zombie voters. Here's my zero-proof hypothetical" Every time 3rd Way opens its mouth, the sound of risk-averse political consultants looking to keep the spigot on until the client is bled dry comes out.
aug 23, 2025, 9:06 pm • 70 0 • view
ok thanks.
aug 23, 2025, 9:19 pm • 1 0 • view
Glad to be of service
aug 23, 2025, 9:24 pm • 2 0 • view
The D brand is that it’s not mainstream, out of touch with regular voters. Using these terms reinforces that (negative) branding. So, don’t use those terms to turn the brand around to convince voters you are in touch with them, and win elections. Why is this so hard?
aug 23, 2025, 9:33 pm • 3 0 • view
Yeah, it's not hard - I just reject the entire premise of the argument. A handful of barely-used phrases isn't why Ds lost the last election, but buying into bs narratives like 3rd Way's "allow the fascists to control language and maybe they won't murder us" will definitely lose the next one tho.
aug 23, 2025, 10:15 pm • 46 0 • view
Doesn’t matter if Ds used them - what matters is the signal they send *now* if you do use them. Ds lost the last election because their brand is that the party isn’t mainstream - so be more mainstream. Don’t give Rs low hanging fruit like this language to reinforce a negative brand
aug 23, 2025, 10:19 pm • 2 0 • view
Show me Kamala using heteronormative, cultural appropriation, patriarchy, microaggression, or safe space at any point in the campaign trail and then we can draw these kinds of connections. Until then, it’s reasonable to question the analysis of a group that seeks to sway Democratic policy choices.
aug 24, 2025, 7:02 pm • 3 0 • view
well she praised Defund the Police in 2020 and ran considerably to the Left of her 2024 positions in 2020. She didn't use these on the campaign trail, but she was not seen as a moderate by the general electorate. www.nytimes.com/2024/07/29/u...
aug 24, 2025, 7:05 pm • 0 0 • view
Some of these positions may be reasonable/debatable but they did put her to the left of Biden, considerably. And a lot of people didn't find her tacking to the center credible in 2024.
aug 24, 2025, 7:06 pm • 0 0 • view
She didn’t lose because she was too far left. She lost because she didn’t have a good sales pitch. She mostly ran on not being Trump and many decided that life under Trump wasn’t so bad.
aug 24, 2025, 7:24 pm • 1 0 • view
I mean, sure, if you want to have a general conversation about whether the democratic field got too far left during the primaries in 2020, and that harmed Kamala in the shortest campaign in history, fair enough. We can have that discussion. I’m not saying we can’t.
aug 24, 2025, 7:18 pm • 4 0 • view
But that’s a very different thing than saying “Don’t use these words [she didn’t actually use] because those words are the thing that makes you seem too extreme.”
aug 24, 2025, 7:18 pm • 4 0 • view
I think that Kamala Harris, a Black woman from “commie” California was seen as liberal by default and it was hard to combat years of ingrained stereotyping no matter how moderate the positions she took. Weighed against that age-old perception Trump was seen as more “moderate” as erratic as he was.
aug 24, 2025, 3:56 am • 5 0 • view
Because he wasn’t in power. He was far away from the spotlight and Americans have an attention span of about six minutes and they forgot who he was.
aug 24, 2025, 12:05 am • 6 0 • view
Not the only reason tho
aug 24, 2025, 12:07 am • 1 0 • view
IMO the strongest tide in American politics is the Everything Sucks coalition. Whoever is in power is going to be unpopular. Trump was uniquely good at shouting Everything Sucks. But it’s not sustainable when you’re doing the things people think suck.
aug 24, 2025, 12:08 am • 9 1 • view
Fair
aug 24, 2025, 12:11 am • 1 0 • view
We’re entering a political era not unlike the one England has lived in for several decades. I’ve spoken to British colleagues my age who say they’ve never had a leader of their country that they admired. Future Americans may well say the same thing by 2040 or so.
aug 24, 2025, 12:16 am • 3 0 • view
If voters perceive you as opposed to their best interests and to them personally, it doesn’t matter if they’re wrong. Figure out how you screwed up your image and fix what you can. And if your solutions start with blaming voters for being stupid/immoral, well, good luck with all your endeavors.
aug 23, 2025, 8:14 pm • 3 0 • view
🙄🤔😵💫
aug 24, 2025, 4:50 pm • 1 0 • view
Yeah, um… that’s not what hap… Jesus Christ, what?
aug 24, 2025, 3:44 am • 2 0 • view
“The Republicans are more like people like me and care more about us”
aug 23, 2025, 8:00 pm • 60 2 • view
He crushed on that metric, which is shocking, but it is what it is
aug 23, 2025, 8:00 pm • 41 0 • view
He’s uniquely adept at connecting w/ people & making them feel like he’s just like them. There aren’t really others in the party w/ that skill. The Harris campaign cozied up to Liz Cheney; I fail to see how being too far left was her undoing. More like they were too timid & let the right define her.
aug 24, 2025, 3:47 am • 1 0 • view
Wld he have crushed on that metric had he not had the round-the-clock backing of a decades-in-the-making media ecosystem responsible for convincing 10s of millions to vote agst their own interest? E.g., virtually no one had ever heard the term CRT until Chris Rufo and that ecosystem made it a thing.
aug 23, 2025, 8:24 pm • 310 9 • view
Absolutely. Why should it be a Dem problem that people are too lazy to determine what’s factual and remain ignorant? Why stop using terms like privilege when Trump’s calling migrants animals and scum? Where’s the pedantic chastisement about the right wing/MAGA vocabulary?
aug 23, 2025, 11:16 pm • 199 5 • view
It’s not a fair game
aug 23, 2025, 11:32 pm • 46 0 • view
Ain't that the truth.
aug 24, 2025, 1:38 am • 18 0 • view
Then why write rules for Democrats only?
aug 27, 2025, 8:29 pm • 0 0 • view
"Why stop using terms like privilege when Trump’s calling migrants animals and scum?" Because the trailer park dwellers deluded into mindless xenophobia by right-wing populists are not privileged themselves, factually not. This is what you should get already or you continue losing
aug 24, 2025, 5:51 am • 0 0 • view
It's politics not a game with rules to enforce fairness. We should be playing by the rules as they are not wishing they are different.
aug 24, 2025, 12:24 pm • 1 0 • view
I heard it in 2007 in grad school. Rufo just pointed out the trend.
aug 24, 2025, 4:50 am • 1 0 • view
I don't think people with that response want Dems to use 'triggered' less. They want them to use 'r_d' more and get mad about Cracker Barrel designs, but be fine with Insurrection.
aug 24, 2025, 10:40 am • 4 0 • view
And Dems will never admit it because half or more of our pundits are grifters who use that crap to get attention and followers.
aug 24, 2025, 12:22 pm • 1 0 • view
I saw him on the teevee and he talks like uncle bob.
aug 24, 2025, 12:56 am • 1 0 • view
I have lost all faith in Americans after that election. We voted for an amoral, sexual predator and fraudster. He is one of the worst humans on the planet. Americans as a whole are broken like Trump which is why he won. Dem language is not the issue.
aug 24, 2025, 2:12 am • 7 0 • view
It’s a tribal response and if any party knows how to bend that impulse to its will it’s Republicans. The flip side of negging and handwringing about tone *in public view* is it makes Dems look even more consultant-brained and inauthentic. Know your audience. Find what works. Be yourself.
aug 24, 2025, 3:13 am • 2 0 • view
That’s because those voters see themselves as an orange, incontinent, demented, cheater, millionaire? Or are they just too stupid to know that none of those people care about them whatsoever? The press should start asking these low information voters abt real issues and not 🏳️⚧️ kids & sports.
aug 24, 2025, 1:25 pm • 4 0 • view
aug 24, 2025, 2:10 am • 2 0 • view
In what universe was that? 2016 polls did show that for Trump v Clinton. But 2024???
aug 24, 2025, 12:45 am • 2 0 • view
Look it up, ezra klein talked abt it and had a huge article w charts
aug 24, 2025, 12:46 am • 0 0 • view
This electorate didn’t find “they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats” to be an obvious racist lie and total dealbreaker. This electorate thinks widespread tariffs will lower the price of groceries. The first quarter of this century sucked, but it’ll be a cakewalk compared to the next.
aug 24, 2025, 2:07 am • 13 0 • view
Voters heard what they wanted to hear and this country is still not ready for an intelligent woman president. Nothing I heard from Trump was moderate.
aug 23, 2025, 9:16 pm • 5 0 • view
I know but look at the pub opinion surveys on this.
aug 23, 2025, 9:19 pm • 0 0 • view
definitely, you should point that out without any examination of how the nazi takeover of legacy media enabled this obvious bullshit (not to mention other media fuckery like a "vibes recession" during an economic boom)
aug 24, 2025, 4:20 am • 3 0 • view
Wait, if I don't mention I'm a lesbian or that I work with the LGBTQ+ community in various ways and that I'm concerned about my marriage being deemed illegal and I never talk about my privilege or that of white men who feel the need to govern me and my speech the Dems will win? Y'all got us, right?
aug 24, 2025, 2:14 am • 23 0 • view
I support u and u are welcome to use this language as u see fit; but lecturing ppl abt their privilege will win zero votes
aug 24, 2025, 2:44 am • 15 0 • view
Joe, if "allies" like yourself can't give rhetorical support why would any other voting bloc trust you to put your vote where your mouth isn't on policy?
aug 24, 2025, 8:43 am • 10 0 • view
U have my rhetorical and actual support and don’t scare quote me when u don’t know me My students are reading the obergefell decision in 2 weeks bc I think it’s that important.
aug 24, 2025, 1:06 pm • 6 0 • view
And because the Democrats have tenaciously delivered for and defended LGBT people while in office and on the courts for decades now?
aug 24, 2025, 1:08 pm • 5 0 • view
Joe, you need to take this seriously. Your academic peers at Columbia and other colleges are folding because they too have fallen for this word trap. Democrats of the two parties have a better record on LGBTQ rights, including appointing Justices to that effect. Now academics are crumbling.
aug 24, 2025, 1:13 pm • 6 0 • view
And why are academic institutions crumbling? Because they listened too much to conservatives like Tom who always wanted them to fail but just not in this Trumpy fashion. They make you afraid of talking about your own papers and ideas to the point people outside don't see the value as much anymore
aug 24, 2025, 1:16 pm • 4 0 • view
Their record on LGBT is wildly better than republicans. Wildly. Ur second point is not a serious one.
aug 24, 2025, 1:19 pm • 6 0 • view
Tom didn’t vote 3x for a party he wanted to lose.
aug 24, 2025, 1:19 pm • 0 0 • view
I wish it wasn't serious, but you know as well as I do that the Trump Administration is appointing a "compliance officer" for Columbia and will likely expand that to other colleges that fold. You also know what they're trying to do to the Smithsonian when it comes to history.
aug 24, 2025, 1:21 pm • 2 0 • view
No problem, you folks go get 'em. Make sure you pander to all their Christian Nationalist hopes and dreams, where the people represented by the policies on the "no sayums" list won't exist if we don't speak about it. Promise them everything. I'm sure all they need is to feel heard.
aug 24, 2025, 4:46 am • 19 0 • view
It’s not “don’t speak about it”. It’s speak about it in terms the marginally engaged voter can understand and get onboard with. You need their votes to win and make change.
aug 24, 2025, 4:03 pm • 1 0 • view
Yeah, better to lie to them about immigrants eating pets. *That's* the takeaway.
aug 24, 2025, 4:00 pm • 1 0 • view
aug 24, 2025, 3:59 pm • 0 0 • view
Fuck that noise!
aug 24, 2025, 8:35 pm • 4 0 • view
Curious take for a Professor (of practice?) Of course I readily understand what you’re getting at - but being complicit in a race to the bottom is a very slippery slope. Then again, a relatively under-educated populous, maybe easily controlled no matter what the ideology.
aug 24, 2025, 5:38 pm • 2 0 • view
Pretty soon Tom's gonna ask us to stop using the terms Fascism, Racism, and Authoritarianism, as the jackboots that forgot their hoods start busting down doors in NYC and Chicago.
aug 24, 2025, 11:40 am • 37 3 • view
Advisors to Democrats busy rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
aug 24, 2025, 1:03 am • 24 2 • view
No, we should definitely fuck the patriarchy.
aug 23, 2025, 10:02 pm • 3 0 • view
I don't understand why people are so defensive about this list of words. There is no need to be invested in words that turn off voters. It's like when the right got really invested in the word "retard" and that turned off the liberals. To this day, I still know that MY used it and I don't know why.
aug 24, 2025, 1:01 am • 2 0 • view
It’s because it’s a fake controversy. The people who pretend to care about “homeless” vs “unhoused” don’t want to hear about either. They have no interest in ever acknowledging or helping the people to whom these words refer. They’re just trying to create discord among people on the left.
aug 24, 2025, 4:23 am • 8 1 • view
I don't believe this at all. These usages are very common in activist groups.
aug 24, 2025, 6:32 am • 0 0 • view
My argument is not that the words aren’t used. My argument is that the people urging us not to use them would rather cause friction on the left than acknowledge or address the problems the words point to.
aug 24, 2025, 2:21 pm • 1 0 • view
Most of these words are precise and necessary. The people who critique them hope that by getting rid of the words they can begin to make their meanings go away. Fuck that whole project.
aug 24, 2025, 4:28 am • 4 2 • view
Just went thru 2nd bout of breast cancer in 3yrs. My cancer Docs want you to eat tons of protein,labeled me"food insecure." As a retired cop,disabled in line of duty"99 w/o a COLA since Christie's'08 cancel, I now can afford just 2wks of produce. On top of it all as a Senior abt am to lose medicare.
aug 24, 2025, 2:07 am • 6 1 • view
dcinboxinsights.substack.com/p/was-it-som...
aug 23, 2025, 9:27 pm • 3 0 • view
You lost me at Third Way. Fuck these guys, they are Republican lite.
aug 24, 2025, 3:42 am • 42 0 • view
I think instead of “words and phrases” you really meant “topics.” Be honest. Maybe Democrats should be debating the best fishing lures or shotguns instead?
aug 25, 2025, 4:34 pm • 0 0 • view
Then provide the clearer terms you think should replace them.
aug 24, 2025, 11:22 pm • 16 1 • view
Crickets🦗🦗
aug 25, 2025, 12:24 am • 5 0 • view
Way to keep focused on what’s really important. Kudos to you.
aug 23, 2025, 10:35 pm • 2 0 • view
Thanks for dialoguing. The intention wasn’t to trigger you or make you feel like I was othering you. I’m holding space for this dialogue. Subverting norms is a wide ranging topic that I’m going to continue to be holding space for. People are fighting to talk like this. Dems are doomed.
aug 24, 2025, 3:34 am • 0 0 • view
90% of the time I hear these words, it's a conservative complaining that someone might say these words.
aug 23, 2025, 10:09 pm • 38 0 • view
Exactly. It's like the 'When did you stop beating your wife' accusation. A bad faith argument, with Fox and Right Wing media as the Greek chorus amplifying the message.
aug 23, 2025, 10:16 pm • 9 0 • view
Tom. You should know better. How many Democrats not in academia use these terms?
aug 23, 2025, 8:48 pm • 9 0 • view
I agree with simpler words and phrases. but Third Way thinks the Dems should just become Republicans and sell out, so think folks aren’t focusing on the phrases, but that Third Way wants you to stab minorities and lgbtq folks in back, etc also.
aug 23, 2025, 9:38 pm • 11 0 • view
What do you propose be used instead?
aug 24, 2025, 10:47 pm • 0 0 • view
“Critical theory”?
aug 24, 2025, 2:19 am • 0 0 • view
If we are talking about tactics of winning, maybe Nichols has a point. But what does this say about majority of Americans being “triggered” by these words? You’re then just catering to the dumbest, bigoted individuals. It doesn’t say anything much about the average American JFC
aug 24, 2025, 12:52 pm • 17 1 • view
How the fuck do you talk about queers? Too many words on this list describe very real power/identity issues. If you want to strike heteronormative how do you describe it? Or do you not want to describe it? Do you want to keep it? Nope.
aug 24, 2025, 12:56 pm • 15 1 • view
Where are the stats for this triggered majority?
aug 24, 2025, 6:28 pm • 0 0 • view
On one hand, Democrats use some dopey words cause they are trying to care about other people's feeling...and on the other hand, Republican are treasonous criminals who have been destroying the country for 50 years and also CANNOT stop raping little kids BOTH SIDES
aug 25, 2025, 4:32 pm • 5 1 • view
I don’t hear Dems, as in elected officials, talking like this. But I do hear it from a few insufferable friends and relatives
aug 23, 2025, 8:39 pm • 5 0 • view
Can we take on corporate speak next? Please
aug 23, 2025, 8:36 pm • 1 0 • view
Oh no! Fancy words! 😱 How will the unwashed masses... understund us wen wi us fansi wordses?
aug 24, 2025, 4:09 am • 43 0 • view
I surmise this is erotesis because the answer is perspicuous
aug 24, 2025, 11:29 am • 5 2 • view
The rhetorical thrust of my preceding assertion, though couched in the trappings of irony and suffused with the tincture of sardonic inflection, nevertheless retains its essential validity and continues to withstand scrutiny irrespective of its satirical presentation.
aug 24, 2025, 1:57 pm • 5 0 • view
You've injured my internal thesaurus.
aug 24, 2025, 6:39 pm • 1 0 • view
That's certainly the manner of language I employ when addressing my butler and chauffeur.
aug 25, 2025, 11:41 am • 0 0 • view
And what would you suggest as a replacement for patriarchy?? You might as well say we shouldn’t use the word misogyny. We live in a patriarchy and as a woman that absolutely affects my life.
aug 23, 2025, 7:53 pm • 36 0 • view
You must've been chuckling as you posted this, knowing that for at least 72 hours, legions would make your point for you. Classic. I have only one word on my ban list" "impact," as a verb. It's an intentionally vague term popularized by DOD, home of "collateral damage." 1/2
aug 24, 2025, 1:44 pm • 4 0 • view
90% of the time, the user means "harm." Ban it from your lexicon and see how much clearer+precise your words become.
aug 24, 2025, 1:44 pm • 0 0 • view
Also "friendly fire"...
aug 24, 2025, 2:31 pm • 2 0 • view
The problem is not these words. The problem is that the words refer to issues and people that the Right would just as soon ignore.
aug 23, 2025, 7:00 pm • 545 16 • view
I think it's that GOP messaging persuaded gettable, lower middle class voters that their last bit of liquid income was needed to pay for someone else's gender affirming surgery. In fact I'm pretty sure that's what happened.
aug 23, 2025, 10:13 pm • 73 2 • view
But the dem establishment should hit back. Make a video with trans celebrities explaining how the red areas are getting fucked economically. But the truth is America is collapsing hard, and the folks at the top are looking around for someone to blame while they enjoy the fatcat life a little longer.
aug 25, 2025, 4:42 pm • 3 1 • view
Why involve trans folks in this at all? It just seems like an oddly specific element that doesn't really have any political upside.
aug 25, 2025, 4:53 pm • 2 0 • view
Because when democrats run from the transgender issue, they make the conservative stance appear correct. The right learning they can use this, goes further, and more rights are on the chopping block. And people care about their rights more than small taxes on eggs.
aug 25, 2025, 4:55 pm • 1 0 • view
So the entire political fault lines reorient around people's rights and relative social standing of various groups instead of focusing on economic growth etc.
aug 25, 2025, 4:56 pm • 0 0 • view
But all you are going to do is take the message of "the GOP are going to destroy your rights", and let them fall for the trap of thinking that it only applies to trans folks, and then disregard the issue. By specifically including trans folks in the message, you are supporting the GOP lies.
aug 25, 2025, 5:25 pm • 1 0 • view
What you need to do is put people who look like MAGA chuds in the message, talking about how the GOP screwed them over.
aug 25, 2025, 5:25 pm • 1 0 • view
Using trans people as cudgel is not as brilliant a political tactic as you think
aug 25, 2025, 5:04 pm • 0 0 • view
Why is it cudgel, I think they should just not run from it. When it comes up "private individuals should have control over their own medical care. it's not up to government what private humans do". Easy
aug 25, 2025, 5:06 pm • 1 0 • view
As part of the transskeptic part of the left, I am absolutely tired of all this far-left trans stuff. I don't care about trans issues, I don't want society to recognise them or do anything more than tolerate them, and I don't want to see them on a stage. They're like scientologists and furries.
aug 25, 2025, 5:13 pm • 1 0 • view
You have a right to be bigoted but you should protect the constitution for trans rights. Fight them on turf there so the right doesn't move on to gay or women's rights. It's strategic if the moral argument falls on deaf ears.
aug 25, 2025, 5:33 pm • 0 0 • view
Tolerance is the standard we should be aiming for because it's the right standard on most of these issues. Try to make people validate or believe in something and it rightly causes all kinds of trouble.
aug 25, 2025, 5:36 pm • 0 0 • view
Sure, but leave trans kid's medicine alone. Call me an apache helicopter but don't touch my human rights.
aug 25, 2025, 5:38 pm • 0 0 • view
That’s a sure fire way to lose in a landslide.
aug 25, 2025, 5:53 pm • 3 0 • view
Man... that's a dumb Progressive idea if there ever was one. Just talk about the tanking economy cause by Trump and his congressional quislings. Inserting Trans into that is not necessary right now with how fast and bad Trump has screwed the economy except for the 1%.
aug 25, 2025, 4:49 pm • 9 1 • view
I think you guys don't understand these people. They don't care about absolute well-being because they don't understand why it's important. They care about relative status compared to other social groups. It's not logical to think the best economic policy comes tied at the hip to homophobic ideology
aug 25, 2025, 4:52 pm • 2 0 • view
Which isn’t a thing because it is such a minor issue. Maybe they should be more concerned with the billions going to Israel for their free college and free healthcare that includes abortion. But that actually requires thinking.
aug 24, 2025, 4:41 pm • 2 0 • view
Yes, they ran that commercial with Harris and gender care.
aug 24, 2025, 5:21 am • 13 0 • view
That actually was put in place when Trump was first in. The Dems should have had ads explaining that.
aug 24, 2025, 4:43 pm • 0 0 • view
And it absolutely killed her. It was dumb for her to ever say that and anyone defending it doesn't want to win they want to be right. Can't stand that kind of stupid thinking.
aug 24, 2025, 12:21 pm • 8 0 • view
Her response was from a 2019 interview during the Dem primary.
aug 24, 2025, 3:40 pm • 17 0 • view
Exactly. It was put in place by Trump.
aug 24, 2025, 4:45 pm • 6 0 • view
The correct response is "individual medical decisions are up to individuals, their doctors, and their families. Your discomfort with transgender people isn't the governments' purview."
aug 25, 2025, 4:45 pm • 0 0 • view
The policy was put in place during Trump and this quote was from 2019. Dems should have loudly pointed that fact out. That is where they fail by not pushing back.
aug 24, 2025, 4:47 pm • 3 0 • view
It was right before Election Day if I remember correctly. It wasn’t throughout her short campaign.
aug 24, 2025, 4:55 pm • 0 0 • view
Unless of course cheating in toss up states happened
aug 24, 2025, 4:43 pm • 1 0 • view
That’s not because of the words Dems supposedly use too much, tho.
aug 26, 2025, 5:01 pm • 0 0 • view
Instead, now it's paying for golf outings and gold spray paint
aug 24, 2025, 10:07 am • 4 0 • view
The right uses these words more than the left, is the problem.
aug 24, 2025, 9:45 am • 3 0 • view
Bingo. They don’t want us to stop using the word privilege. They want us to stop talking about privilege.
aug 24, 2025, 1:04 pm • 3 0 • view
Those words do need to go,I agree.
aug 24, 2025, 2:54 am • 1 0 • view
Ridiculous.
aug 24, 2025, 6:41 pm • 1 0 • view
What about the issues they address? If the words go, communication and organization around the issues goes too
aug 24, 2025, 4:36 am • 5 0 • view
It's opinions like that, Tom, that make conservatives whining about "too many" liberals in education a laughable premise. Most of y'all self selected yourself out of academia by taking issue with too many syllables. What a tragedy.
aug 24, 2025, 8:40 am • 26 0 • view
“Defund police” and “pack the SCOTUS” were terrible messaging choices. Better alternatives might be “reallocate police funding,” like toward community programs and mental health crisis training. And “balance the SCOTUS,” which sounds more representative and fair than simply “packing” it.
aug 24, 2025, 6:01 pm • 4 0 • view
DEFUND was one of the all time worst slogans. But Mr. Nichols is definitely showing his blindspot with many of these terms. Especially given that the bad guys won when we pitched fastballs down the middle. Gotta go left now, can’t fight from the center any more because the center is gone.
aug 24, 2025, 10:26 pm • 1 0 • view
Ceasing to use those words will not fix a broken society. A broken society must hit rock bottom - breadlines, bankruptcies and foreclosures - before any serious hope of self reflection and change can start to take shape.
aug 25, 2025, 2:07 pm • 2 0 • view
People that get hung up on words are weird. I mean the people who tell other people what words to use or not to use, regardless of their ideology. I shouldn’t use incarcerate people. Is just incarcerated OK? Will there be a referee for these things.
aug 23, 2025, 7:29 pm • 4 0 • view
Gosh, what a coincidence! It turns out that Democrats don't use those terms (though some academics do). Republicans use them more, in complaining about how Dems supposedly talk, but don't. bsky.app/profile/lemi...
aug 23, 2025, 8:02 pm • 847 56 • view
This is a key point. Republicans have created a parody of what Democrats stand for and used it to drive cultural hatred to the point of sectarianism. Visual memes on X amplified this. The media, embraced it all. Now Newsom IS PLAYING THE SAME GAME ON REPUBLICANS. lol @chrislhayes.bsky.social
aug 24, 2025, 12:08 pm • 8 0 • view
Maybe in the real world. In social media they peddle this BS all the time
aug 24, 2025, 5:46 am • 0 0 • view
Democrats say this all the time on social media? Do you mean the actual party, Democratic leaders, or people you are pretty sure must be Democrats? Because there's kind of a difference.
aug 24, 2025, 5:51 am • 14 0 • view
Oh, and I forgot the journalists
aug 24, 2025, 6:03 am • 0 0 • view
The people attributing themselves as "blue", or left of blue, and the pundits and world explainers insisting on the "Dr." in their pompous bluesky profiles. The leaders not so much, I think they pretty much anticipated the message Tom Nichols transports here.
aug 24, 2025, 5:56 am • 0 0 • view
Well said (and referenced). Thanks
aug 23, 2025, 8:16 pm • 81 1 • view
I don't see how Nichols's statement is in contrast to this? He literally states how those terms didn't arise within politics as your citation states. He instead says it would benefit Dems if those terms disappeared, depriving Cons of that ammunition.
aug 24, 2025, 6:12 pm • 0 0 • view
because cons strip mine literally every word anyone says anywhere for things to weaponise. Usually as an attack on "real americans like us." Obama wore a *tan suit*. He named a type of lettuce. People drank wine or lattes. Kids had avocado. It's not the words, it's the cons grievance pipeline.
aug 25, 2025, 1:49 am • 1 0 • view
Given that the cons use them as ammunition, seems like some sort of agency-related comment is called for, like, "Jesus Christ, the Republicans can't engage in honest debate any more"
aug 24, 2025, 11:17 pm • 3 0 • view
Democrats: outside of academics no one uses these woke terms The literal Democratic Party: x.com/greg_price11...
aug 26, 2025, 8:50 am • 0 0 • view
Exactly 🙏
aug 24, 2025, 9:41 am • 0 0 • view
Also, Third Way think tank? We’ve have enough neoconservative, Reagan based voodoo conservative social/economic bullshit to last well over the next 200 years Those fuckheads can piss right off When did Tom Nichols become the David Brooks of Chris Cillizzas
aug 24, 2025, 2:22 pm • 3 0 • view
⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️
aug 24, 2025, 4:53 am • 1 0 • view
1/2 Have to agree. Their use makes DEM messaging seem elitist, pedantic & inaccessible to the voting public. Elections are about votes which means appealing to voters. Most of these are simply euphemisms. Others suggest coddling of sensitive college kids.
aug 23, 2025, 7:07 pm • 5 1 • view
2/2 Any substantive position can be maintained without them. Objectional rhetoric from the right doesn’t change this reality.
aug 23, 2025, 7:09 pm • 2 1 • view
I want my politicians to be smarter than the average person, I’ve had enough of the dumbasses destroying our country right now.
aug 23, 2025, 9:27 pm • 46 4 • view
I agree. I'd look at their characters first. Half of Nazi senior officials had university degrees.
aug 25, 2025, 3:12 am • 0 0 • view
Also fed up with the dumb asses. But using esoteric, trendy terminology doesn’t make one smart. It can, however, make someone an ineffective communicator.
aug 23, 2025, 9:34 pm • 8 0 • view
Do you hear yourself? I don’t hear dem’s talking like you just did.
aug 23, 2025, 9:36 pm • 6 0 • view
What does that mean? You think they should? shouldn't? something else?
aug 24, 2025, 12:01 am • 0 0 • view
Were you trying to make a point not to use words that the average person doesn’t understand by using the same kind of words?
aug 24, 2025, 12:06 am • 2 0 • view
Yeah, but... can't really blame the politicians for that, now can we. I mean, they don't vote themselves in (in theory). Just take a moment to consider the sortd of minds that voted for the dumbasses destroying our country right now. We passed Aggressively Wrong quite some time ago.
aug 23, 2025, 11:54 pm • 1 0 • view
Yes you’re right but we now have a situation where politicians lie and then get into office and do immense damage. This last election people didn’t vote for immigrants to be put in camps or sent to gulags, their healthcare to be unaffordable or SS to be cut, troops in the streets, etc
aug 24, 2025, 12:03 am • 0 0 • view
let me hold your hand while I say this, but people absolutely voted for that I spent 2024 talking to 1000s of voters, and let me say say that MANY voted for exactly what’s happening it’s deeply uncomfortable to deal with, but we’re not gonna get through this with “nobody voted for this“ denialism
aug 24, 2025, 3:05 am • 4 0 • view
I totally disagree. Trump lied about everything that’s why he’s underwater on all issues.
aug 24, 2025, 3:09 am • 1 0 • view
2 days ago, FB with folks I went to school with and related. Sorry to be the one to break it to you, but stuff like this is disturbingly common. I wish it weren't.
aug 24, 2025, 3:58 am • 1 0 • view
And that from a self-described "Patriot who loves his country" and "white Christian heterosexual male".
aug 24, 2025, 4:01 am • 1 0 • view
You disagree with the real data that I got from thousands of voters? That’s not disagreement. That’s refusal to accept.
aug 24, 2025, 3:10 am • 2 0 • view
I feel like they hate smart people. Experts, scientists, etc. I read that one of the prospective museum exhibits that was opposed was a portrait of Anthony Fauci. Give me a break! He is a great American!
aug 23, 2025, 9:41 pm • 4 0 • view
The country is being run by the stupid kids who used to beat up the smart kids because smart=gay.
aug 23, 2025, 10:10 pm • 5 0 • view
More like smart=Satan, but, yeah, you got the basic idea.
aug 23, 2025, 11:55 pm • 4 0 • view
Probably more the case today, but I'm old and thinking about the dumb kids at my 1970s high school.
aug 24, 2025, 12:10 am • 5 0 • view
We need to remember that Trump supporters are a minority, but they get all the attention.
aug 23, 2025, 9:42 pm • 2 0 • view
That is clearly their superpower!
aug 23, 2025, 9:45 pm • 1 0 • view
Existential is over used personally
aug 23, 2025, 6:59 pm • 0 0 • view
What should we call those things? They are real things.
aug 24, 2025, 1:09 pm • 17 0 • view
And these terms are USED mostly in academic hothouses. Few Democratic elected officials used most of these terms on even an occasional basis. It is a GOP-complicit media that holds the entire Democratic Party responsible for the things some Oberlin student said.
aug 25, 2025, 12:01 pm • 10 0 • view
Have to say I agree. Do you all (pet peeve: People who started saying "y'all" at age 30) want to be self-righteous, or do you want to win?
aug 23, 2025, 7:20 pm • 0 0 • view
This reminds me of discussions with scientists learning to do public speaking. It helps to avoid technical terms and present info in terms that will resonate with your audience. As the experts, it falls to us as scientists to be flexible in interacting with people outside our specialty. Same here.
aug 24, 2025, 3:53 am • 1 0 • view
Who exactly is speaking like this? Apart from a couple of randos on Bluesky I mean? The answer is nobody, so stop amplifying right-wing bullshit
aug 24, 2025, 4:58 am • 5 0 • view
I get it. It feels like selling out. But if the Dems don’t take over congress, none of it matters. This is the opposite of the endless vague posts telling anti-maga to “fight harder.”
aug 24, 2025, 5:22 pm • 1 1 • view
It's the inevitable outcome of whataboutism. The Russians won.
aug 24, 2025, 7:52 pm • 2 0 • view
This list doesn’t include Latinx so it is incomplete.
aug 24, 2025, 6:01 pm • 1 0 • view
Oh, it also doesn’t have snapping your fingers as clapping which is not only dumb, but also makes me irrationally angry.
aug 24, 2025, 7:13 pm • 0 0 • view
Tom there are no words that sometimes a democrat might use that the GOP won’t attack. Democrats could say the word “lilac” and the GOP will insist the word is a communist signal. So no backing down.
aug 23, 2025, 9:23 pm • 19 0 • view
G-A-Y. Remember the Lavender Scare?
aug 24, 2025, 6:16 am • 2 0 • view
So, I will bite. And am genuinely asking. What are you suggesting instead of cisgender? Instead of LGBTQIA+? You can’t seriously be asking to just erase them. I have issues others, I but I will keep my questions to these.
aug 24, 2025, 4:49 am • 23 0 • view
I am also curious how Tim Miller will address this list the next time your on the Bulwark.
aug 24, 2025, 4:49 am • 9 0 • view
Ahh you fell for it, Tom! Take a beat next time, pet your cat, and you'll avoid being taken in by this kind of claptrap in the future.
aug 24, 2025, 4:38 pm • 10 1 • view
FORMER GOP TELLS DEMS HOW TO ACT🤦🏼♂️🤷🏽♂️ please 🫷stay INDEPENDENT (who are embarrassed GOP) OATHS BY THE MILITARY ARE JUST WORDS NOTHING MORE=🇺🇸 (Wars are money makers like Fake News)
aug 24, 2025, 2:05 pm • 13 3 • view
Some are worth saving as it would take too many words to say same thing, like food insecurity. But for the most part, these are “triggering” words
aug 23, 2025, 7:17 pm • 0 0 • view
Ah, now I see why there's a "Tom Nichols follower" moderation label now.
aug 24, 2025, 5:14 am • 52 5 • view
The sooner Democrats abandon the academic hothouses of the left and their claptrap, and speak like regular Americans, the sooner Democrats will win elections. This will necessarily mean relegating you and your views to the dustbin of history. Neo-scholasticism is dying.
aug 27, 2025, 7:50 pm • 3 0 • view
Tom's clarity of thought has been a social media treasure for many years.
aug 27, 2025, 7:51 pm • 6 0 • view
Bad take, Tom.
aug 24, 2025, 6:36 am • 26 0 • view
I’ve supported Democrats since Gore, but over the years I keep hearing them incorporate terms like these and I just roll my eyes.
aug 28, 2025, 5:49 am • 1 0 • view
Hard agree.
aug 24, 2025, 12:24 am • 0 0 • view
Unhoused is kind of useful for distinguishing people living outside vs those in shelters/couch surfing
aug 24, 2025, 3:52 am • 6 1 • view
That's unsheltered which is different from unhoused. I think, at least... these terms are sometimes unclear to regular people.
aug 24, 2025, 4:05 am • 3 0 • view
www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/co...
aug 24, 2025, 4:08 am • 0 0 • view
For years HUD had used that measure to determine priority for funding emergency shelter, but multiple studies of efficacy find that it is better to not differentiate. Creating a lower threshold to service = better outcomes.
aug 24, 2025, 4:06 am • 3 0 • view
they are the same thing bro
aug 24, 2025, 3:59 am • 14 0 • view
aug 24, 2025, 4:04 am • 1 0 • view
Oh dear. You are turning conservatives into fascists with that rhetoric. Please stop before Trump turns Chicago into a police state.
aug 24, 2025, 5:05 am • 3 0 • view
The term "trickle down economics" should be used to bash the GOP into oblivion. If Dems had ONE policy that proved to be as ineffective and harmful to America as cutting taxes for the rich and corporations, right-wing media would hammer them daily.
aug 24, 2025, 12:26 pm • 21 2 • view
I agree with you except on the Food Insecurity. That is a real problem in parts of the country. Otherwise - agree with you.
aug 23, 2025, 11:34 pm • 0 0 • view
I agree it's a real problem. But call it hunger, not "food insecurity."
aug 23, 2025, 11:52 pm • 2 0 • view
Except those aren't the same thing. Just like housing insecurity ≠ homelessness.
aug 24, 2025, 12:20 am • 13 0 • view
Yeah Tom no. Words are important. Descriptive words all the more so.
aug 24, 2025, 9:31 pm • 11 0 • view
These terms carry an aura of unearned, supposed superiority (on the part of those who use them) that bugs me. They don't aid in communication.
aug 24, 2025, 2:07 am • 3 0 • view
Then you simply don't understand them. Most people aren't using them to act superior. They're using them because they have specific, useful meanings. If you don't know what that is or why we changed it, just ask.
aug 24, 2025, 3:14 am • 52 0 • view
This sounds like an inferiority complex. How can so many people feel attacked when encountering new words? Is learning really that terrifying?
aug 24, 2025, 3:49 am • 16 0 • view
These are just words and terms that are easily looked up -- as well as their usual context. Words are words are words. It's our job to learn as many of them as possible so that we can use them in their correct context. #TMYK!
aug 24, 2025, 5:04 am • 1 0 • view
Hi again: This is a good overview of use contexts and repetition: dcinboxinsights.substack.com/p/was-it-som...
aug 24, 2025, 5:06 am • 2 0 • view
'Unearned?' Praytell how does one earn the right to use language? From whom?
aug 24, 2025, 12:01 pm • 3 0 • view
No, "unearned" was in reference to the supposed moral superiority of the overly political correct.
aug 25, 2025, 1:22 am • 0 0 • view
As a once cultural studies academic type I find the critique carries with it an anti intellectual strain that is esp right now when the Trump admin is destroying the humanities dangerous
aug 25, 2025, 2:53 pm • 0 0 • view
That's a fair point, but we're not there yet in terms of education. I hate to say that, though. I wish all schools taught critical thinking and the ways to identify propaganda, then Fox and its clones might not have the pernicious effect they have.
aug 27, 2025, 3:09 pm • 0 0 • view
Maybe they don’t aid you in communication. You really feel like you can speak for everyone else? I personally feel like these terms have helped me understand the related issues better, even if I’ve only ever read or heard them and not used them myself
aug 24, 2025, 4:27 am • 7 0 • view
Tom, I like and use all of those words, the only exception is cisgender. I do not like that word because it starts with "cis" which sounds like the beginning of the word sissy. Maybe Born Sex is better, anything but cisgender. Other than that, all the other words are good words. Generally speaking
aug 24, 2025, 7:10 am • 0 0 • view
liberals are more intelligent and better educated that right wingers. We are able to use those words and know their meaning. Food insecurity is a precise phrase. You may have a meal now but you worry about having food tomorrow. It covers more than just "going hungry."
aug 24, 2025, 7:10 am • 8 0 • view
The patriarchy is real, Tom, and you're part of it.
aug 24, 2025, 4:19 am • 194 7 • view
He enjoys his role.
aug 24, 2025, 4:23 am • 60 1 • view
Agreed. Right or left, there's a splashy glamour to being a contrarian which is equivalent to self arousal, particularly for the guys who benefit from patriarchy.
aug 24, 2025, 5:02 am • 49 0 • view
Dickwaving
aug 24, 2025, 5:09 am • 33 0 • view
Fuck the Patriarchy
aug 24, 2025, 11:06 am • 8 0 • view
It would be a huge step if you'd stop pushing straw man reasons for why Democrats lost the election and pointed your hothouse finger at your own party, its decades long lurch deeper into the gutter, and a media ecosystem that's treated it all like some game.
aug 23, 2025, 10:36 pm • 138 11 • view
Instant follow
aug 24, 2025, 7:43 pm • 6 0 • view
This post is framed in way to suggest it's attempting to unify and empower. It's completely the opposite. It's divisive. Every racist, homophobe, transphobe etc., that calls themselves a dem is going to be so happy to find other like-minded dems in the replies.
aug 23, 2025, 8:42 pm • 30 0 • view
Sorry, but after attending a local Dem district meeting, I have to agree on the ridiculousness around jargon. Could not believe in our busy lives, time was taken to debate, second, and vote - on whether we should call it 'houselessness'. Wtf how about some ideas to FIX IT? 🤔
aug 25, 2025, 6:25 am • 0 0 • view
Don’t forget, “genocide.” We wouldn’t want to “trigger” you. :)
aug 23, 2025, 6:57 pm • 74 0 • view
Yes, that was a microaggression. I wanted to lightly challenge your safe space.
aug 23, 2025, 6:58 pm • 26 0 • view
aug 23, 2025, 7:04 pm • 7 0 • view
Sooo anything that makes straight white people uncomfortable? Got it
aug 26, 2025, 1:26 am • 5 0 • view
Never heard anyone use those terms…so …
aug 24, 2025, 1:37 pm • 2 0 • view
Can you explain why food insecurity is a problem? It seems like a good description for the situation millions find themselves enduring.
aug 23, 2025, 9:19 pm • 6 0 • view
Because it is an academic way to say "can't afford / don't have good food" which is what the average person can understand.
aug 23, 2025, 9:21 pm • 8 0 • view
I think the average person can understand "food insecure" though. Sure you don't want to overly complicate things, but language changes and we have all kinds of ways to express things. Not all new uses of language are obfuscating and obscure.
aug 23, 2025, 9:28 pm • 10 0 • view
Not all of them, you're correct, but this one sounds like a snooty way to say poor people need food. And you're missing that point
aug 23, 2025, 9:29 pm • 1 0 • view
Can you show me an example of a Democratic candidate or office holder who used that term in their communications with constituents?
aug 23, 2025, 9:32 pm • 2 0 • view
You're tired of arguing with Tom, now you want to argue with me too? Not today Satan
aug 23, 2025, 10:30 pm • 0 0 • view
Well neither your nor Tom nor anyone else making this argument can come up with one example.I’m not trying to be a pain, I REALLY would like to see an example so I can decide for myself whether this is an actual problem or a made up problem.
aug 23, 2025, 11:37 pm • 1 0 • view
I've got bad news for you, real problems and made up problems are all still problems
aug 24, 2025, 12:10 am • 0 0 • view
So it’s not more insulting to call people “poor?”
aug 23, 2025, 9:45 pm • 0 0 • view
“Poor” is, like any other descriptor, subject to abuse, but in and of itself it’s an objective descriptive term of the condition of not having the wherewithal to provide for oneself and their family, assuming they have dependents.
aug 23, 2025, 9:51 pm • 1 0 • view
Like this post?
aug 24, 2025, 1:11 pm • 0 0 • view
Also I think "food insecure" is not something Dem candidates say in their stump speeches, I think it's more likely something you find in a think tank white paper. If you have an example of an candidate saying "food insecure" I'd love to see it.
aug 23, 2025, 9:29 pm • 3 0 • view
I’m not sure your concept of average person and some of the average people out there match. Everyone understands can’t afford to put food on the table, not sure food insecure is as common.
aug 24, 2025, 3:17 am • 1 0 • view
LMAOOOOOO, “obfuscating and obscure” Listen to yourself. Put down the thesaurus and talk to regular people who do your dirty work for you.
aug 23, 2025, 10:01 pm • 4 0 • view
I’m genuinely mystified as to why this expression is so enraging for you. It seems a simple explanation of a common problem and unlike most of the others is expressed clearly.
aug 23, 2025, 10:34 pm • 5 0 • view
Nobody’s “enraged.” We’re saying that creating special terms like this alienates the exact voters we need to persuade.
aug 24, 2025, 3:13 am • 5 0 • view
I’m not enraged, I’m laughing at the tone-deaf stupidity.
aug 24, 2025, 1:56 am • 2 0 • view
I’m not running for office.
aug 23, 2025, 10:04 pm • 0 0 • view
You’re part of the amen chorus that makes up the Dems he’s talking about. It only takes a handful of loud mouth leftists barking nonsense online to give MAGA all the ammo they need to mow us down at the polls b/c the Dems running are too scared to tell the lot of them “That’s not a rule, fuck off”.
aug 24, 2025, 2:05 am • 1 0 • view
No, they can’t. You don’t understand how stupid most people are. Left, right, and center. Soooooo many stupid people.
aug 23, 2025, 10:00 pm • 1 0 • view
To me it softens the sound. Makes it seem less urgent. Going hungry screams urgency.
aug 24, 2025, 1:50 am • 4 0 • view
Are you communicating that you have a degree, or that people are starving?
aug 24, 2025, 2:33 pm • 0 0 • view
'Children are going hungry' hits a bit harder than 'food insecurity' (which sounds like someone is having trouble sticking to their diet).
aug 24, 2025, 2:42 pm • 0 0 • view
"food insecurity" sounds like a description for an eating disorder
aug 24, 2025, 3:24 pm • 0 0 • view
You've taken the people out of it with "food insecurity".
aug 24, 2025, 6:10 pm • 0 0 • view
Because what does that even mean? Say “starving children” or “people without food.” Those are simple terms that everybody understands.
aug 23, 2025, 9:37 pm • 11 0 • view
Because it evokes NOTHING in the electorate. It’s a meaningless euphemism that hides the true negative impact of HUNGER on CHILDREN!
aug 23, 2025, 9:58 pm • 3 0 • view
Because it sounds silly and pretentious. Just say “people who don’t have enough food.”
aug 24, 2025, 4:19 am • 2 0 • view
It’s difficult to square “cultural appropriation” needing to be avoided but “stolen valor” needing to be a crime.
aug 23, 2025, 8:29 pm • 9 0 • view
You are such a snowflake
aug 24, 2025, 11:43 am • 33 0 • view
Sorry Tom, Trumpism is all about white male christian privilege- which is the patriarchy. There is at least 70 yrs of academic analysis clarifying this & referencing the backlash that has occurred throughout history every time women gain any measure of self determination.
aug 24, 2025, 4:28 am • 27 2 • view
Cisgender is a normal word so is LGBTQIA We’ve moved past privilege with trump, who is a white supremacist I don’t see politicians using the rest of those terms too often
aug 24, 2025, 5:15 pm • 10 0 • view
Food insecurity is a must to talk about too Overall terrible, stupid list the more I look at it
aug 24, 2025, 5:15 pm • 10 0 • view
Is this the most important issue? No. Are some of these incredibly annoying and a turnoff to the average voter? Yes. I think the most important thing for any Dem candidate is to just be themselves. Don’t talk like a consultant or an HR manager.
aug 23, 2025, 7:48 pm • 143 10 • view
It's bad thinking to think you could ever win over centrist bigot voters by easing off the equality angle. The right will just keep pushing because they know it works. Why wouldn't they? Dems need to lean into trans rights not run from it. The GOP will always be more hateful than dems are capable of
aug 25, 2025, 4:47 pm • 0 0 • view
I think the term Latinx is a perfect example of how some words or terms are used as a litmus test by the left Wing to sort out purity. Trump gained ground in the Hispanic community because many were offended. We are better off without these code words
aug 24, 2025, 6:34 pm • 1 0 • view
And don’t listen to the Democratic consultants or pundits - use the language you are most comfortable with and can send the message you want. Walz saying “mind your own damn business” was great but some pundit told him to stop.
aug 23, 2025, 7:55 pm • 89 0 • view
This is true only because you said "Democratic consultants." Consultants can be very useful. When they are good at what they do. Most Democratic consultants are not close to that.
aug 23, 2025, 11:58 pm • 7 0 • view
Tim Walz seemed to speak pretty plainly (calling Elon and co. "dipshits," for example), but not sure that really did anything to move the needle toward the Dem ticket.
aug 23, 2025, 10:43 pm • 5 0 • view
Any "Dem" in 2025 telling you to avoid using LGTBQIA+ or Critical Theory or Cisgender is asking you to be a Republican. Trying to eliminate those words is also labeling them as wrong. They aren't. They're actually very necessary for the change we need.
aug 23, 2025, 8:01 pm • 17 0 • view
Yep
aug 25, 2025, 12:27 am • 0 0 • view
A few are words that normal people say regularly, such as patriarchy. Is there a different word we should use instead of patriarchy? I feel like the consultants are hinting to Dems to avoid these TOPICS. However, they don't want to ruffle any feathers, so instead they advise avoiding certain words.
aug 23, 2025, 8:02 pm • 14 0 • view
And you may be right that's the goal (and a wrong goal). The TOPICS are very important because they're at the core of our humanity. But I do think that some of the terms can be distancing, too clinical and sometimes divorce very impt topics from the emotional reality for people not "in the know".
aug 23, 2025, 10:14 pm • 4 0 • view
Having gone to a college where a lot of these words were used, I agree. It goes back to the problem Democrats have of communicating effectively. I personally don’t think all of them should go away. LGBTQ and safe space are becoming mainstream, even among my Trump supporting Gen-Z friends.
aug 23, 2025, 9:45 pm • 4 0 • view
Considering that many MAGA snowflakes need their safe spaces of Fox or Newsmax, that term is here to stay.
aug 23, 2025, 9:51 pm • 5 0 • view
The truth of that second point of yours is the takeaway for any Dem pol. It's simply true, and pretending it's not is political malpractice. And it's this point that Bluesky folks are ignoring when they complain that nobody should make an issue of it.
aug 23, 2025, 8:17 pm • 3 0 • view
Unfortunately, because of the way the Big Ballistic Bill was crafted, voters won't be feeling the brunt of the pain from it until after the mid-terms are over. Dem candidates need to focus on making this front & center in people's minds, leaving the myriad of social issues for another day.
aug 24, 2025, 4:04 am • 1 0 • view
If you don't think this is a huge issue and why a lot of people turned to Trump then go away and let the big kids handle shit. You are the one talking like a fucking consultant.
aug 24, 2025, 12:28 pm • 1 0 • view
See, now, this makes sense. Speak naturally, from the heart, and never mind anything else. I loathe jargon words of any kind. They get in the way of clear communication. OTOH, it's *incredibly* annoying that once again, only one "side" apparently needs to watch its language... (sigh)
aug 23, 2025, 10:15 pm • 7 0 • view
what kind of alcohol is that?
aug 25, 2025, 11:30 am • 0 0 • view
It would be a huge step forward for Republicans and for general clarity in political discourse to describe their leader as a "convicted CRIMINAL felon." This description precisely reflects facts and court judgement against their leader.
aug 24, 2025, 3:58 am • 25 0 • view
Agree!
aug 24, 2025, 5:03 pm • 1 0 • view
On this day, 08/24/2023, Fulton County Jail took Trump’s absurd mugshot. Legally, he is a “convicted CRIMINAL felon.”(“Pedophile” to be legally added to the list soon, I hope!)
aug 24, 2025, 1:18 pm • 7 0 • view
And it would be a huge step forward if the GOP would stop calling themselves pro-life.
aug 24, 2025, 2:41 pm • 12 0 • view
Why and how? Are these words too triggering? Do they describe falsehoods in your view? Are saying to choose different words to describe and discuss these issues or to just shut up about them because they don’t matter? Your criticism is clear, but not your why! Tell us that…
aug 24, 2025, 11:03 pm • 2 0 • view
I do think that the next election has to be about winning. There is a meaningful sleeve of the male voter population that this kisses the mark with and we need at least some of them. Focus on inflation, focus on the job losses, focus on empathy.
aug 25, 2025, 12:39 pm • 0 0 • view
Suck my privilege, bitch
aug 23, 2025, 8:35 pm • 1 0 • view
Advice from an organization that has never fielded and likely will never field a candidate who can win a general election. It's a choice, I suppose. Some of those terms can go away, maybe, but some of this sounds like whining from people who don't like to practice empathy.
aug 23, 2025, 6:57 pm • 25 1 • view
Screw you, Tom.
aug 24, 2025, 10:41 pm • 2 0 • view
The Death of Expertise guy complaining that experts use precise language 👎
aug 24, 2025, 5:20 pm • 19 1 • view
How is unhoused more precise than homeless? Yet it sounds so much more pretentious.
aug 24, 2025, 9:49 pm • 1 0 • view
Any word can be considered pretentious if you want to think it is, like calling a deaf person "hearing-impaired". An unhoused person is living on the street. When you put them into a bed in a shelter, they're still homeless, but they're no longer unhoused.
aug 25, 2025, 8:14 pm • 0 0 • view
American voter: "I'm unhappy, and I don't know why" Old Guy: "I can tell you precisely why that is" American voter: ... Old Guy: "Your terminology is outdated and imprecise" American voter:... MAGA: Hahahahaha
aug 24, 2025, 7:15 pm • 1 0 • view
Tom suggests Democrats (i.e. politicians) should not use these terms (they don't). He concedes they originate in academia (where they are used for precision). He suggests the words go away (which would mean academics, i.e. experts, no longer use precise language in their realm). His take is bad.
aug 24, 2025, 8:00 pm • 7 0 • view
He did no such thing. I had no difficulty understanding he was referring to electorally effective political communication rather than the intrinsic value of intra-academic jargonising.
aug 24, 2025, 8:17 pm • 0 0 • view
Im all in for political change, through reaching persuadable voters & projecting political power. But I am in no doubt that there is active belief that 'retailing' these terms will somehow alter the political conversation across the electorate and that they have a 'power' to change. In short: nope.
aug 24, 2025, 8:35 pm • 0 0 • view
The takeaway, then, is 'don't use artful euphemisms, rather speak like a normal person'
aug 23, 2025, 7:00 pm • 5 1 • view
Do you think people don’t understand what unhoused means?
aug 24, 2025, 9:25 pm • 2 0 • view
You're about to get reamed in the comments by people who think that ask amounts to "stop talking about or caring about racism and trans people"
aug 24, 2025, 1:18 pm • 1 0 • view
The obsession with showing you did the reading isn’t that politically savvy in the best of times, but is especially counterproductive at a time when anti-elite/expertise sentiment is sky high
aug 23, 2025, 6:50 pm • 7 0 • view
However I also think that the right has such a stranglehold on the political narrative on this country that they can essentially poison any term or phrase they want
aug 23, 2025, 6:52 pm • 40 2 • view
🎯🎯
aug 24, 2025, 7:50 pm • 0 0 • view
This.
aug 23, 2025, 6:58 pm • 5 1 • view
We don't need to capitulate to the bigots and racists no matter what side they claim to be on. This is bullshit. The only term on that list that shouldn't be used by anyone is 'unhoused'.
aug 24, 2025, 3:02 pm • 1 0 • view
Add “academic”. There’s nothing so polarizing and elitist as intelligence in a democracy. It actually makes some people sound like they know more than others.
aug 23, 2025, 7:24 pm • 0 0 • view
Truth as a privileged white male understands it. The rest of us relate to those words.
aug 25, 2025, 6:11 pm • 3 0 • view
A list from a self proclaimed moderate think tank which is nothing more than a political hothouse aimed at keeping progressive liberals off the ballot.
aug 24, 2025, 2:07 pm • 60 5 • view
Spoken like a privileged white man who uses his white male privilege daily at the expense of others. Fuck all the way off you oppressive asshole. You'd have been a pro segregation activist in the 1950s 🖕
aug 24, 2025, 7:15 am • 32 0 • view
A Republican who does not like/support Trump is still a Republican.
aug 24, 2025, 2:01 pm • 13 2 • view
These words are accurate. Are you suggesting we shouldn't use them because they offend people, especially Republicans? We are in a thought police era.
aug 24, 2025, 5:31 am • 18 0 • view
I think grammar policing needs to stop altogether.
aug 24, 2025, 8:04 pm • 5 0 • view
Are we still doing this, Tom?
aug 23, 2025, 6:52 pm • 28 0 • view
At this point it isn't words we need militias! Yes! I said what I said! Fuck micro-agression!
aug 24, 2025, 8:15 pm • 2 1 • view
People are hungry. They are kidnapping the homeless. They are persecuting Trans children. When you use the old, non PC term it hits a lot harder. When they start killing they gonna have some new PC term to cover that because they don’t want to upset MAGA?
aug 24, 2025, 2:23 pm • 4 0 • view
Let me just say this, there is no conversation an elected Dem should be having right now that should including any of those words except LgBTQ.
aug 24, 2025, 2:21 pm • 0 0 • view
Involuntary confinement should be...what?
aug 24, 2025, 6:25 pm • 0 0 • view
Dem pols are hesitant to use terms like even unhoused (while ICE is rounding up the homeless as we speak) bc the right is effective in weaponizing them. Ironically it is righty think tank “intellectual” hothouse flowers like Chris Rufo who do the weaponization.
aug 23, 2025, 7:10 pm • 6 0 • view
Meanwhile right wing fringe theories like the unitary executive are given credence by our Supreme CT & hand Trump kingly powers, the Great Replacement Theory is preoccupying JD Vance, and “white genocide” has us importing Afrikaners. Conservative academia helped build the edifice of Project 2025.
aug 23, 2025, 7:39 pm • 8 0 • view
One sides dogmatists can wreck shop and the other is told to shut the f*ck up.
aug 23, 2025, 7:46 pm • 8 0 • view
How much Vocabulary Compliance would be enough for the Thought police? What are YOUR suggested words for unhoused and LGBTQIA+? "Normal," probably? What is YOUR suggested words for "patriarchy"? "Everything is fine here, nothing to see, men?" Probably just a good, old-fashioned, "Repeal the 19th,"
aug 24, 2025, 7:33 am • 33 1 • view
Where's your evidence, Tom?
aug 24, 2025, 7:28 am • 7 0 • view
The word patriarchy can disappear once the actual patriarchy is destroyed. Other than that, I concur.
aug 23, 2025, 7:15 pm • 6 0 • view
What are you . . . Republicans runaway from who and what. DEMs don't do that horseshit. Democratic Party members are all those things and more. Voters want Democratic Party members who are from the democratic wing of Democratic Party.
aug 25, 2025, 6:56 am • 0 0 • view
Lefty academics are tiresome and lacking in a sense of humor. That's been parody material for a couple of hundred years. But it's the classic Biblical beam/mote thing. I would rather put up with a few tedious academics over white nationalists and fellow knuckle draggers any day
aug 23, 2025, 7:55 pm • 7 0 • view
Outside of academia, who really deals with them? And who are the elected Dems talking like this?
aug 23, 2025, 8:14 pm • 10 0 • view
why?
aug 24, 2025, 8:20 pm • 1 0 • view
aug 23, 2025, 8:29 pm • 7 0 • view
Right? Isn't this like two days in a row? 🍿
aug 23, 2025, 7:00 pm • 7 0 • view
aug 23, 2025, 7:20 pm • 4 0 • view
“Pregnant people” should be added to this list.
aug 23, 2025, 7:39 pm • 2 0 • view
The problem is, the words in question include: -words democrats say more often -words republicans say more often -words that no politician has said on record With little apparent concern for sorting one from the other. bsky.app/profile/dcin...
aug 24, 2025, 11:43 am • 21 1 • view
A few of these are words normal people say regularly, such as patriarchy. Is there a different word we should use instead of patriarchy? I feel like the consultants are hinting to Dems to avoid these TOPICS. However, they don't want to ruffle any feathers, so instead they say to avoid certain words
aug 23, 2025, 8:01 pm • 36 1 • view
Bro culture?
aug 23, 2025, 8:23 pm • 0 0 • view
Remember, Democrats are responsible for anything any academic or left wing blogger has ever said. And republicans are not responsible for anything their party leader has said or done. Those are the rules.
aug 23, 2025, 8:53 pm • 57 1 • view
However, terms emanating from right-wing hothouses are accepted and preferred
aug 23, 2025, 10:48 pm • 4 0 • view
Words aren’t the problem. The broken system being run by a felon that wants to be a full blown dictator dragging us backward in time stripping away human rights in a completely lawless way while avoiding accountability for his endless corruption is the actual problem.
aug 24, 2025, 3:38 am • 65 0 • view
Pointless. The platform should be ramming these terms down gop throat daily as a reminder of abject failure. Should also be finding solutions like as with AOC, Warren, Sanders and Mamdani. 70% are ignored so 28% can try to advance and 2% stop everything.
aug 25, 2025, 5:19 pm • 2 0 • view
It would be even better if Third Way went away forever
aug 24, 2025, 4:20 pm • 23 1 • view
Maybe if they used them more often they’d have a better chance.
aug 24, 2025, 1:30 pm • 13 0 • view
bsky.app/profile/maxk...
aug 25, 2025, 12:49 am • 16 1 • view
No
aug 24, 2025, 12:11 pm • 15 0 • view
Gotta fight for that kinder gentler fascism.
aug 24, 2025, 12:26 am • 23 1 • view
I have almost always agreed with you but seriously? This post…In this moment? Abolishing these phrases would be a “huge step forward?” Ok play this out, let’s say tomorrow they’re gone. Will we have a democracy six months from now? This is a big part of the problem??!!!
aug 24, 2025, 5:32 am • 26 0 • view
Exactly. I what a disappointing post by Nichols.
aug 24, 2025, 7:26 pm • 3 0 • view
🐂 💩 Tom. I don’t even hear Democrats use these words. But you aren’t going to stop what younger generation say are you? They’re the 21st-century people.
aug 24, 2025, 1:38 pm • 4 0 • view
Stop pushing right wing bullshit Tom. It’s not us using inclusive words that are ruining his country. The GOP literally support fascism but this is what our lame “journalists” think we need to focus on.
aug 23, 2025, 6:54 pm • 1,910 58 • view
Amen.
aug 24, 2025, 2:24 pm • 3 0 • view
aug 24, 2025, 3:22 am • 1 0 • view
No, he's saying this is what the right wing is focusing on. We're serving up softballs.
aug 24, 2025, 1:52 am • 2 0 • view
That's tricky for a right wing bullshitter
aug 25, 2025, 8:57 am • 0 0 • view
He's not a journalist, and doesn't claim to be one.
aug 23, 2025, 9:40 pm • 0 0 • view
God forbid we do anything that forces conservative Americans to do some self reflection or feel in any way uncomfortable about how their actions or beliefs have hurt people.
aug 24, 2025, 7:54 pm • 2 0 • view
Thanks for saying it.
aug 24, 2025, 10:47 pm • 2 0 • view
Exactly
aug 24, 2025, 4:42 pm • 3 0 • view
The faculty lounge defends obtuse vocabulary. How refreshing.
aug 24, 2025, 3:35 pm • 0 0 • view
Yeah, it feels so gross to tell people to stop using language that is meant to be kinder and more respectful just because the right is offended by the fact that this kindness reflect badly on them.
aug 24, 2025, 3:39 am • 42 5 • view
This all day!
aug 24, 2025, 4:32 am • 6 0 • view
Thank you 🙏
aug 24, 2025, 9:40 am • 4 0 • view
This.
aug 23, 2025, 8:03 pm • 154 0 • view
"inclusive words", often meaning 0.1% of people (like any trans man still with a uterus who might plan to use it)
aug 23, 2025, 7:07 pm • 2 0 • view
So? 0.1% of Americans still equals hundreds of thousands of people. It comes down to a choice between using certain language in a legal or medical context in order to include and protect the rights of a vulnerable group...or making another group of people feel icky because of a word they don't like.
aug 23, 2025, 7:34 pm • 52 0 • view
Oh stop. For example, the rare trans-man who still has a uterus KNOWS he's a rare case, and normal language does not account for every single instance. And he can handle any convo with the few people who actually need to know his intentions and condition.
aug 23, 2025, 7:41 pm • 7 0 • view
Again, by your own estimate it accounts for hundreds of thousands of people, so there's no need to frame it as "the rare trans man," let alone act like you conveniently know how this singular person feels about the issue.
aug 23, 2025, 8:29 pm • 24 0 • view
Also nonbinary people. Do we need to go back to calling it a “womb” as well or did “normal people” somehow learn to update their vocabulary when we learned more about how things work.
aug 24, 2025, 4:29 am • 13 0 • view
"Womb" is still used for "uterus" just as "baby" is used for "infant". Where's the memo that we're to avoid "womb" good grief
aug 24, 2025, 6:40 am • 1 0 • view
“People that think trans folk deserve basic human dignity” encompasses so many more people than “trans people with a uterus they might use”. The right (conserva Dems included) forget this.
aug 24, 2025, 9:03 pm • 2 0 • view
I'm sure the trans men really appreciate you speaking over them on their behalf
aug 24, 2025, 12:29 pm • 13 0 • view
And you? Speaking for them are you?
aug 24, 2025, 12:36 pm • 0 0 • view
I very specifically did not do that thing, as you may notice, if you read my post again more carefully
aug 24, 2025, 12:37 pm • 8 0 • view
I mean I know at least a dozen in real life, am close friends with four, and every single one can speak for himself
aug 24, 2025, 12:39 pm • 7 0 • view
One doesn't have to be a member of a group to speak about a group. If you think there is a reason what I said was *wrong* then you're free to say so and say why.
aug 24, 2025, 1:01 pm • 0 0 • view
"It's okay they wouldn't mind" is speaking for, not about There are plenty of trans guys on this very app you can talk to if you want. I shan't ping them (it's rude) but we can see what they have to say
aug 24, 2025, 1:05 pm • 8 0 • view
In a legal or medical context anything can be spelled out - there are VASTLY more unique and unusual circumstances than the few that are singled out for linguistic protection - and that is exactly what tells the world that there are favored groups in the eyes of the left.
aug 23, 2025, 7:42 pm • 2 0 • view
Language about trans people needs to be specific because their legal rights and medical autonomy are constantly being undermined. If there is another vulnerable group who is being targeted for discrimination or whose needs are being ignored, I am more than happy to include them.
aug 23, 2025, 8:32 pm • 17 0 • view
That's an interesting angle. What groups do you think are being left out?
aug 23, 2025, 8:23 pm • 10 0 • view
I'm referring to the whole of human and individual experience and how that's unique to every individual. But see you're already trying to see if some underpriviliged group might be left out ...
aug 23, 2025, 8:32 pm • 1 0 • view
What's wrong with wanting to not leave people out? Caring for others is not a bad thing. I don't see how it could possibly offend someone.
aug 23, 2025, 8:43 pm • 37 0 • view
🎯🎯
aug 24, 2025, 7:52 pm • 2 0 • view