After a few days of downtime, I caught up on the news and read what my colleagues had written, and I came across Ed's piece on the Third Way's attempt to rein in Democratic doublespeak.
Ed's piece is great, by the way, and I would like to add my two cents.
H/t: @ThirdWayMattB @ThirdWayTweet: https://t.co/mWpUWXrYk8
— Sarah Longwell (@SarahLongwell25) August 22, 2025
The premise of Third Way's memo is pretty simple: Democrats are actually quite normal, but they just don't speak like normal people.
Au contraire. Modern liberals are crazy as loons. The reason they use certain words is that they have policies that make absolutely no sense to normal people. They have to twist reality into so many knots to make things like "trans inclusion" make any sense at all.In reality, most Democrats do not run or govern on wildly out-of-touch social positions. But voters would be excused to believe we do because of the words that come out of our mouths—words which sound like we are hiding behind unfamiliar phrases to mask extreme intent.
That is true of so many liberal ideas. They literally make no sense. So when you hear something like "undocumented citizen," the whole point is to confuse people. We all know that citizens are...citizens. And "undocumented" is just another way of saying "illegal alien." Put the two words together and you have a nonsense term. And that is the whole point, right?
Many parents of “trans kids” are sacrificing their own children just to climb the social ladder.
— Gays Against Groomers (@againstgrmrs) August 24, 2025
They view having a “trans kid” as a status symbol, but it’s really just an excuse to parade innocent children at drag shows for applause and approval.pic.twitter.com/qt1VTlzQ7V
A white woman on the left told Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears:
— Jeffery Mead (@the_jefferymead) August 23, 2025
“If trans can’t share your bathroom then blacks can’t share my water fountain.”
She went so far left that she circled back to their party’s racists roots.
And notice, no significant outrage from the left to cancel her.… pic.twitter.com/oIha2rjBAw
The whole point is to disconnect people from reality and create an alternative "narrative"--another word that liberals love--because their fundamental position is that reality is a figment of our imagination. That is the whole point of Critical Theory--change the meaning of words and you change reality itself.
A white woman on the left told Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears:
— Jeffery Mead (@the_jefferymead) August 23, 2025
“If trans can’t share your bathroom then blacks can’t share my water fountain.”
She went so far left that she circled back to their party’s racists roots.
And notice, no significant outrage from the left to cancel her.… pic.twitter.com/oIha2rjBAw
Third Way has identified ONE problem the Democrats have--they sound insane because, quite literally, they ARE insane. One definition of insanity is being fundamentally disconnected from reality, and that is the fundamental principle of the left: reality is what they make it. That is why calling a "trans woman" a man is "genocide" and "violence." By denying their "reality," you have made them disappear.
In a new memo, shared exclusively with POLITICO, the center-left think tank Third Way is circulating a list of 45 words and phrases they want Democrats to avoid using, alleging the terms put “a wall between us and everyday people of all races, religions, and ethnicities.” It’s a set of words that Third Way suggests “people simply do not say, yet they hear them from Democrats.”
They span six categories — from “therapy speak” to “explaining away crime” — and put in sharp relief a party that authors say makes Democrats “sound like the extreme, divisive, elitist, and obfuscatory, enforcers of wokeness.” In the document, titled “Was It Something I Said?” Third Way argues that to “please the few, we have alienated the many — especially on culture issues, where our language sounds superior, haughty and arrogant,” according to the memo.
Among the blacklisted terms: privilege … violence (as in “environmental violence”) … dialoguing … triggering … othering … microaggression … holding space … body shaming … subverting norms … systems of oppression … cultural appropriation … Overton window … existential threat to [the climate, democracy, economy] … radical transparency … stakeholders … the unhoused … food insecurity … housing insecurity … person who immigrated … birthing person … cisgender … deadnaming … heteronormative … patriarchy … LGBTQIA+ … BIPOC … allyship … incarcerated people … involuntary confinement.
“We are doing our best to get Democrats to talk like normal people and stop talking like they’re leading a seminar at Antioch,” says Matt Bennett, Third Way’s executive vice president of public affairs. “We think language is one of the central problems we face with normie voters, signaling that we are out of touch with how they live, think and talk. In recent weeks, this has become a bit of a thing, with comedians like Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman highlighting how insane Dems can sometimes sound. Also, elected officials like [Delaware Rep.] Sarah McBride and [Kentucky Gov.] Andy Beshear are begging their colleagues to just be normal again.”
When you and I see a man pretending to be a woman smoke every girl in a track meet, we see a man smoking young women in a track meet. Democrats deny that reality and pretend that the man is a woman, merely because he says so. That is insane.
"Boy with long hair destroys girls in track meet."
— Kyle Seraphin (@KyleSeraphin) August 24, 2025
If you are a dad letting your daughters compete against cross dressers, you are the problem. pic.twitter.com/BoaYnrXUku
No amount of changing the words will change the insanity. Third Way is right that normal Americans don't think of moms as "birthing persons," but as long as they insist that men can have babies, the problem will persist.
WATCH: Illinois 5th grader from Naperville District 203, tells her school board to KEEP males OUT of girls’ sports after a boy competed in a recent track meet.
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 17, 2025
“Men and women are very different...I’d hate if a boy beat me!” pic.twitter.com/6jdcgNnY8q
Because we have eyes as well as ears. We can SEE what is happening.
We watched this boy AB Hernandez dominate in girls’ triple jump, long jump and high jump at the CA track & field state meet in May.
— Beth Bourne (@bourne_beth2345) August 16, 2025
Now a SoCal girls’ volleyball team is forfeiting rather than risk injury to their players. @CIFState and @GavinNewsom it’s time to end the… https://t.co/uzRu88Lkn0 pic.twitter.com/L4YbFovnyT
The Democrats have a sanity problem, not a language problem. The language is downstream of the ideas.
Even Third Way can't get past this. They think that the ideas are compassionate and empowering, but the language is confusing.
“We will never abandon our values or stop doing things to protect those who need help, encouragement, trust, a second chance, acceptance, a fair shake, and the opportunity to pursue life, liberty and happiness But as the catastrophe of Trump 2.0 has shown, the most important thing we can do for those people and causes is to build a bigger army to fight them,” the memo reads. “Communicating in authentic ways that welcome rather than drive voters away would be a good start.”
Voters hate illegal immigration. They hate "trans inclusion." They hate being called Nazis. They hate being told they are bad people because they voted for Trump. They hate calling senile old men "sharp as a tack."
We have EYES. We can SEE what is happening. We hate being told an MS-13 member is just a "father" and "constituent."
It is insane.
Abby Phillip: There is absolutely no evidence that Biden’s DOJ was weaponized against Trump.
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) August 24, 2025
This is CNN. pic.twitter.com/dGBjvvaHgp
That a media person can lie so openly about facts we all know to be true is breathtaking, until you realize that for Abby Phillip reality itself does not exist.
We have reached a point where Democrats will flee to ILLINOIS to protest gerrymandering, and we are expected to ignore that Illinois is one of the most gerrymandered states in the nation. We get lectures from Maura Healy on the subject at the same time she runs a state with no Republicans in Congress.
It is insane.
Until Democrats change their policies, "normal" people will be driven away. It is their values that are the problem, not their words.
Does that mean Democrats won't win elections? Not really. The dominant factor in close elections is what people think of the direction of the country.
But it does mean that Democrats have a much bigger hill to climb than if they were normal.
