New memo for Democrats outlines words to avoid
Think tank Third Way is back trying to help Democrats connect with everyday people
Back in March, MTTS Notes reported on a report given to top Democrats by Third Way, which Politico described at the time as a “centrist Democratic think tank.” The report literally laid out just how the ways in which Democrats are out of touch with the working class.
Read that installment here:
A related “memo” article here:
Well, Third Way is back with a new memo for Democrats on what not to say if they want to rehab their party's image and win future elections. Prepare yourself, because, honestly, reading this was like watching the blind leading the blind... into target practice.
The memo on the Third Way website is titled, "Was it something I said?” with a header at the top that reads, “To: All Who Wish to Stop Donald Trump and MAGA.”
And, as one might guess, it's all about language. Specifically, instructing Democrats not to use the woke babble the nation has been subjected to for years now and which arguably fed into why Democrats lost in 2024.
The post contains a PDF of the memo, which opens with this paragraph:
For a party that spends billions of dollars trying to find the perfect language to connect to voters, Democrats and their allies use an awful lot of words and phrases no ordinary person would ever dream of saying. The intent of this language is to include, broaden, empathize, accept, and embrace. The effect of this language is to sound like the extreme, divisive, elitist, and obfuscatory, enforcers of wokeness. To please the few, we have alienated the many—especially on culture issues, where our language sounds superior, haughty and arrogant.
Oh my. Things only got more tone deaf from there.
Specifically, the memo goes on to say it is "focusing on the eggshell dance of political correctness which leaves the people we aim to reach cold or fearful of admonishment." And Third Way went on to dance on its own eggshells to avoid describing any of the words as "woke," while explaining to the reader why not to use them. No, I’m not kidding.
For example, the very first set of terms encompass "Therapy-speak," which Third Way explains "These words say 'I’m more empathetic than you, and you are callous to hurting other’s feelings'."
The words under "Therapy-speak" include Privilege, Violence (as in “environmental violence”), Dialoguing, Othering, Triggering, Microaggression/assault/invalidation, Progressive stack, CenteringSafe space, Holding space, and Body shaming.
Following the "Therapy-speak" list of words, Third Way tells the reader "Be aware of words proliferating in elite circles that have closed off open conversations and have made it uncomfortable for many people to engage in hard topics."
Hard topics. Mmmkay.
Additional words list categories include Seminar Room Language, Organizer Jargon, Gender/Orientation Correctness, The Shifting Language of Racial Constructs, Explaining Away Crime.
All the big ones are there: Birthing person/inseminated person, Pregnant people. Chest feeding, Cisgender, Deadnaming, Heteronormative, Patriarchy, LGBTQIA+, Person who immigrated, LatinX, Bipoc, justice-involved, the list goes on and on.
Each of the categories comes with an explainer of how they are insulting the normies and a follow-up after the list of words telling them to keep fighting but to use normie language.
Most of the words on this list are the same ones people have been canceled by Democrats for not using. These are the same words that big media outfits have tried to proliferate in their style guides, likely after being yelled at for not using them in the first place.
At this point, we have to believe this is a parody post, right? Well, just wait for the conclusion, which is even more hilariously hypocritical.
Written from an Ivory Tower perspective, the memo's conclusion (excerpt below) basically tells the Democrat reader, "you are smarter than anyone you talk to which is why you have your own terminology that the unwashed just don't understand," and "you can think all of these things, but just don't say them out loud or you’ll scare the normies away.”
Since these types of posts and memos tend to get taken down out of embarrassment, the page has already been archived on the Wayback Machine half a dozen times.
The PDF version has been saved as well on my Document Cloud.
Before Third Way’s memo disappears, someone might want to be sent to this woman, who was protesting in Arlington, Virginia, while holding a sign that reads, "Hey Winsome, if trans can't share your bathroom then Blacks can't share my water fountain."
The sign is referring to Virginia Lt. Governor Winsome Sears, the first Black woman to hold that role in the state’s history.
The woman’s sign has gone viral. Maybe it was something she said.