From fleeing “liberal” in the 1990s to running from “defund the police” in 2021, Democratic language panics are nothing new. These cycles of linguistic retreat have become predictable: the left adopts inclusive language, conservatives mock it, and Democratic strategists blame it for electoral losses.
These panics easily spread beyond politics. Target renames its “Supplier Diversity” team to “Supplier Engagement,” while Meta rebrands diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and John Deere pledges to remove “socially motivated messages” from training materials.
The latest political example: A recent memo from centrist think tank Third Way claims that progressive terms like “safe space,” “justice-involved,” “birthing person,” and “systems of oppression” wall Democrats off from “everyday people.” It warns that phrases like “unhoused” brand Democrats as elitist and alienating.
It’s a seductive argument, but it isn’t grounded in reality. It’s a convenient fiction.
The memo doesn’t single out any particular political race. Instead, it claims Democrats generally lose ground with voters because of activist language. That sweeping assertion makes it fair to test against the broadest available evidence — national election data. Voters in 2024 were moved by concrete issues, not vocabulary choices — and the data bear this out.
It’s important to be clear on the actual shifts in the 2024 electorate. Postelection data show that President Donald Trump came close to evenly splitting the Hispanic vote after losing it by a wide margin in 2020, made significant gains among Black voters, and turned younger men from a Democratic-leaning group into a near toss-up. He also retained a larger share of his 2020 base than Kamala Harris did of President Joe Biden’s, with especially strong turnout among Hispanic supporters.
Those shifts reflected not word choice, but the issues voters said mattered most. Among Trump voters in Pennsylvania, exit polling found that the top concern was the economy (43%-50%), followed by immigration (21%-26%), and democracy (13%-15%). Those priorities do not align with the vocabulary Third Way highlights in its memo. By language policing, Third Way doesn’t just miss the point — it echoes the right wing’s playbook. It promotes a so-called war on wokeness, a distraction designed to shift blame and sow cultural resentment.
Third Way builds its case on focus groups, noting that participants supposedly roll their eyes at phrases like “body shaming” or “food insecurity.” But focus groups are contrived conversations with a handful of people. They yield tidy anecdotes, not reliable evidence of how voters act — or what actually drives election outcomes.
As cofounders of a data science and social justice institute, we know the truth: Even interventions far more intensive than word choice — full campaign operations, saturation advertising, direct contact — barely move voters at all. Campaign contact and advertising near Election Day have essentially zero effect on vote choice. In 2016, individual ads barely nudged favorability ratings or votes, no matter who said it or how.
Words matter not because they lose elections, but because they shape how people are treated.
Even the professionals who design and interpret messaging perform no better than laypeople — and barely above chance — at predicting what will persuade voters. If entire campaign operations and seasoned strategists can’t reliably shift votes, the idea that a few activist phrases are alienating the electorate collapses.
Words matter not because they lose elections, but because they shape how people are treated. Person-first language measurably reduces stigma and increases public support for humane policies. The National Institute on Drug Abuse explicitly recommends phrasing that “maintains the integrity of individuals as whole human beings,” because it reduces harmful stereotypes that impede treatment.
In healthcare, stigmatizing language is linked to worse clinical judgments and patient experiences. Clinicians, for example, provide less aggressive pain management after reading stigmatizing notes, and patients report feeling judged and avoiding care — especially among marginalized groups.
The disconnect between language panics and reality is just as stark on crime.
Crime wasn’t a top priority for voters in 2024. And even if it had been, Democrats didn’t lose because of vocabulary. They lost because Republicans weaponized fear while the facts told a different story. Violent crime decreased 4.5% in 2024, with murder down nearly 15%. Property crime fell 8.1%, hitting levels not seen since the 1960s.
Democrats didn’t stumble because they said “involuntary confinement” instead of “jail.” They stumbled because Republicans dominated the narrative while crime rates were actually at multidecade lows.
These recurring language panics are a dangerous distraction. Trump voters prioritized the economy and immigration — issues that have nothing to do with the topics addressed by the vocabulary Third Way criticizes. At a moment when Trump is explicitly pressuring companies to abandon inclusive language, the group is effectively doing his work for him within the Democratic coalition.
Given how consistently data and research cut against the language panickers’ claims, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the real discomfort from moderates isn’t with the words themselves. It’s with what those words represent: An effort to name injustice and demand inclusion.