A new memo from the centrist Democratic group Third Way is making the rounds this week, and it reads a bit like a party trying to teach itself how to be human. The report, published over the weekend, urges Democratic officials to drop the wonky jargon and speak in language ordinary voters actually use. But the advice has sparked eye-rolls from critics who say the very fact that the party needs a training manual for this is the problem.
“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 group wrote. According to Third Way, this kind of speech “puts a wall between us and everyday people of all races, religions, and ethnicities.” The report goes on to note that everyday people only use these terms “as a form of derision or parody of Democrats.”
That last point is probably closer to the mark than Third Way intended. For years, Democrats have championed terms like “unhoused person” and “justice-impacted individual” with the stated goal to “include, broaden, empathize, accept, and embrace.” But to many voters, those phrases sound less like compassion and more like a speech code imposed by people who think they know better. The report’s own examples underscore the disconnect: when was the last time you heard a neighbor, a coworker, or a barista use the phrase “justice-impacted individual” in casual conversation?
The broader issue isn’t just word choice—it’s the party’s obsession with messaging as a substitute for authenticity. California Governor Gavin Newsom, widely seen as a likely 2028 presidential contender, has said Democrats need to be “more culturally normal.” Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor who is also weighing a White House bid, made a similar point in an op-ed last year. “We’ve spent the past five years debating pronouns without noticing that too many students can’t tell you what a pronoun is,” he wrote. Notably, Emanuel didn’t say the pronoun debate was unimportant—he just suggested it may have come at the cost of basic education.
Third Way’s memo is the latest in a long line of Democratic efforts to sound more relatable. But the report’s internal logic is a bit like a sitcom character reading a book on how to be funny: if you have to be trained to be normal, you’re not. The group’s own framing—that Democrats need to “speak like humans”—only reinforces the perception that they’re not quite there yet.
There’s also a layer of political calculation that’s hard to miss. The unspoken goal, as critics see it, is to find just enough normalcy to win elections, then go back to business as usual. Third Way’s report suggests this is about empathy, but the endgame looks a lot like power. The party’s track record on language—insisting on ever-evolving terms and then acting confused when voters push back—suggests that a memo, no matter how well-intentioned, isn’t going to fix the underlying problem.
For all the talk of connecting with “everyday people,” the report’s own language sometimes trips over itself. It aims to help Democrats sound less alien but does so using the kind of focus-grouped, consultant-speak that makes the party’s messaging so sterile in the first place. The report reads like a plea from political professionals to other political professionals, not a genuine effort to speak plain English.
That’s the core complaint from the right, but it’s not just a partisan point. Plenty of independents and even some Democrats have noted the disconnect between the party’s rhetoric and its reality. When Newsom talks about needing to be “culturally normal,” it’s hard to square that with a party that has spent years promoting language that most Americans neither use nor understand. The joke—and it’s a grim one—is that Democrats keep looking for the right words, when the problem is that voters have stopped listening.
Third Way’s report does get one thing right: language matters. Words can build bridges or walls. But the bridges Democrats are trying to build are made of plastic—carefully manufactured, designed in a lab, and utterly unconvincing to the people they’re meant to reach. The party doesn’t need more memos on how to talk; it needs to figure out why voters, in large numbers, feel like the party is talking at them, not to them.
Until then, Americans will keep hearing Democrats promise to “meet people where they are” while speaking a language that sounds like it was invented on a different planet. And no amount of training will fix that.
Source: thefederalist.com — https://thefederalist.com/2026/08/28/democrats-are-still-figuring-out-that-normal-cant-be-taught/