Democrat, democratic

[newdayneeded]

I just don't get why some here are so offended by the description of our party.

If somebody came up to me daily and said "hey, you're a member of the Democrat party" I'd look right at them and "yes, I absolutely am!"

I see zero reason to get offended if someone uses Democrat or democratic. I just don't get the outrage here over it.

To me it's like someone referring to my truck as a Chevy or a Chevrolet.

[StopTheNeoCons]

1. Democrat Party is an epithet for the Democratic Party

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Democrat Party is an epithet for the Democratic Party of the United States, used in a disparaging fashion by the party's opponents. While the term has been used in a non-hostile way, it has grown in its negative use since the 1940s, in particular by members of the Republican Party—in party platforms, partisan speeches, and press releases—as well as by conservative commentators and third party politicians.[1][2][3]

[StopTheNeoCons]

2. conveniently rhyme with autocrat, plutocrat, and worst of all, bureaucrat"

Political commentator William Safire wrote in 1993 that the Democrat of Democrat Party "does conveniently rhyme with autocrat, plutocrat, and worst of all, bureaucrat".[11]

[jcgoldie]

3. It is an intentional GOP slur

It is an intentional act of disrespect to refuse to call someone their name in an attempt to degrade them. It doesn't really matter if you personally feel offended, that is why they do it.

[Beachnutt]

4. I didn't understand it either,

that's why I refer to us as Dems, I don't know whether to say Democrat or Democratic.

[Wounded Bear]

26. It's actually fairly easy in most cases...

Democrat is a noun, as in "He/she is a Democrat."

Democratic is an adjective, as in the adjectival part of the party name: Democratic Party

[elocs]

41. Sigh...this is really simple and if it needs to be explained would the explanation do any good? n/t

[Solomon]

62. and its really sad to see DU-ers and young democrats being confused about the name of our party.

It has always been the "democratic" party. Assholes say democrat party because the "crat" rhymes with "rat". Its an epithet created by our opponents.

It pisses me off every time I hear the term ""democrat" party. And when a democrat slips up and says it, it is particularly unnerving to me.

Saying democrat party instead of democratic party is like saying republic party instead of republican party.

[dalton99a]

5. Limbaugh et al have pretty much changed it to Democrat and normalized its usage

[newdayneeded]

16. Democrat

has been used well before Limbaugh. I remember my dad telling me he and my mom sided with the democrat party when I was like 9. 45 years ago.

[rurallib]

39. My understanding is that Joe McCarthy came up with it during his

red scare days.

His pronunciation had the emphasis on the RAT syllable

[boston bean]

6. Because the name of the party is Democratic Party.

Is it too much to ask to be referred to as such?

[EYESORE 9001]

7. If you just don't get it now, will you ever get it?

This is a threshold moment. Take a step toward understanding the viewpoint of millions of Democratic Americans who don’t like RW troll droppings cast their way. If attention is what you crave, then please proceed. Is it true that negative attention is better than none?

[newdayneeded]

22. ?

Demonrat, libtard, democraps, etc are all names I hate they say.......but, Democrat? I'll never lose sleep over this.

[EYESORE 9001]

25. Good luck with your untroubled life

[newdayneeded]

31. That's my point!

This is what makes people fume? Why let something like this bother you?

As evidenced by this thread, there are people that genuinely lose sleep over this.

The Packers are referred to as the Pack, the Buccaneers are referred to as the Bucs, The Patriots are referred to as the Pats. Zero of those fan bases would be outraged over that.

[EYESORE 9001]

33. It's a political board. People take it seriously.

Keep on chooglin’ if you can’t help it. For all your concern bout people’s emotional wellbeing, you seem hellbent on arguing what you obviously perceive as a sore point among people. There’s a name for behavior like that…it escapes me…droll? Casserole? Cajole?

[jcgoldie]

35. It has been explained to you that it is used as an intentional perjorative

The usage is in no way analogous to calling a football team the "Pack". If that doesn't matter to you congratulations but starting a thread to argue with people who do care about being insulted is just being deliberately obstinate and attention seeking.

[moose65]

42. Those are all nouns, though

Those terms you mention aren't adjectives, as the word "Democratic" is. The shortened form of those words are nicknames, much like shortening "Democrats" to "Dems" would be. No one would have any objection to that.

But in using a noun as an adjective, it becomes a slur.

Example: "My sister married a Jewish lawyer". That sentence is perfectly fine. But if I said "My sister married a Jew lawyer" it takes on a whole different meaning.

[Fiendish Thingy]

48. Your example is probably the best, clearest one I've seen. Nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

53. But in English, nouns can be co-opted to work as adjectives

eg "a rose garden" - a garden featuring roses.

It's not a matter of grammar, it's about the preference of the party. In the UK, the Liberal Democrats (their official name is that, the plural noun without 'Party') use 'Liberal Democrat' as an adjectival phrase, eg

"Sarah Olney is the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for the Treasury and Business and Industrial Strategy"

Whether using a noun that way is a slur depends on the history. "My farmer brother-in-law" is not a slur.

[moose65]

54. True

Some words, like "republican" and "libertarian" are both nouns and adjectives.

Some words are not, and in using them that way it sounds odd.

No one would say "May I get you an alcohol beverage?" or "Put these words in alphabet order." It just sounds wrong.

[muriel_volestrangler]

56. "drink mixer", "coffee mixer", "milk frother", "hand foamer", "martini shaker", "cocktail shaker"

all found on one page: https://www.amazon.com/Drink-Mixers/s?k=Drink+Mixers

Those are all plain nouns, but they are used like adjectives to describe the nouns after them. As I said, some people do say "Liberal Democrat spokesperson". The reason to always say "Democratic spokesperson" in the USA is because that's what the party's usage is.

[moose65]

60. And?

As I said above, some nouns can be used as adjectives. But not ALL of them. None of the nouns you listed have what I'd call an "adjective" form. Some nouns do:

Athlete -----> athletic

Magic ------> magical

Music -------> musical

And so on.

Why do you keep bringing up the Liberal Democrats? Here in the US, if the Republicans referred to us as Democrats, that wouldn't be a problem. They'd say stuff like "The Democrats have lost their minds." However, they have to go one step further and say "The Democrat Party has lost its mind." They deliberately do it because they don't want to remind people that we are "democratic" while they are not.

They've even stopped referring to our system of government as a Democratic Republic. They are now saying Constitutional Republic.

I guess, in your world, they should be saying "Constitution Republic."

[muriel_volestrangler]

61. Because the point is that "Democrat spokesperson" is grammatically acceptable

in the same way that "coffee maker" is grammatically acceptable (or 'an "adjective" form' is acceptable, though 'an adjectival form' would also work). But the US party is the Democratic Party, so, for that particular party, "Democratic" should always be used as the adjective.

[moose65]

63. Is "coffee" an adjective in that construction?

I’ve always thought of things like “coffee maker” to be kinda like a 2-word noun. You could also have an adjective in front, like “I have a red coffee maker.”

How would you feel about referring to Rosh Hashanah as the “Jew New Year”? Is that grammatically acceptable?

[muriel_volestrangler]

69. It's the history that makes "Jew New Year" offensive, not the grammar

as I have shown, nouns like "farmer" can be put where you might put an adjective. In my dictionary (Chambers), "Jew" is listed as also an adjective, but derogatory or offensive. So, yes, "Jew New Year" is grammatically acceptable, but socially and culturally not.

No, I don't think 'coffee' is an adjective in 'coffee maker', but it is doing the work of one. There is a proper term for this:

In grammar, a noun adjunct, attributive noun, qualifying noun, noun (pre)modifier, or apposite noun is an optional noun that modifies another noun; functioning similarly to an adjective, it is, more specifically, a noun functioning as a pre-modifier in a noun phrase. For example, in the phrase "chicken soup" the noun adjunct "chicken" modifies the noun "soup".
...
Noun adjuncts can also be strung together in a longer sequence preceding the final noun, with each added noun modifying the noun which follows it, in effect creating a multiple-word noun adjunct which modifies the following noun (e.g. "chicken soup bowl", in which "chicken" modifies "soup" and "chicken soup" modifies "bowl" ). There is no theoretical limit to the number of noun adjuncts which can be added before a noun, and very long constructions are occasionally seen, for example "Dawlish pub car park cliff plunge man rescued"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noun_adjunct

That last example came from the BBC.

[moose65]

70. Thanks

I knew there had to be a word for it!

It's been a long time since I had a grammar class.

[StopTheNeoCons]

47. False analogy, look it up

[chriscan64]

50. It is all about intent.

Clinically you could say that the n word is simply a version of negro which is Spanish for black. The offensive part is what is in the hearts of racists who say it. "Democrat Party" is intended as an insult. It is not some acceptable alternate version, like Bucs for Buccaneers. Of course, each of us has a degree of control over our reaction to it as with any insult. It may improve one's quality of life to choose not to be bothered so much, but it is still an insult.

[BumRushDaShow]

8. It's a slur created by the RW

The party's official name is "Democratic Party", NOT "Democrat Party".

Someone can be a "Democrat" (noun) but the party is not named the way they use it, which is done as a pejorative adjective.

[Beachnutt]

11. So when referring to the party use Democratic

but when referring to a person use Democrat ?
correct ?

[jcgoldie]

14. yes "Democrat" is a noun

"Democratic" is an adjective.

[Beachnutt]

18. Thank you,

I needed this cleared up.

[BumRushDaShow]

17. Yes.

And this is why you often see people refer to "democratic" and the meaning with a "little 'd'" versus "Democratic" and its meaning using a "big 'D'".

[Beachnutt]

19. Got it, thanks.

[BumRushDaShow]

28. YW.

Other replies in the thread trace this disparagement back to the Gingrich era and I have posted this about that ass many times - https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=14864412

The Man Who Broke Politics

Newt Gingrich turned partisan battles into bloodsport, wrecked Congress, and paved the way for Trump’s rise. Now he’s reveling in his achievements.

Story by McKay Coppins
November 2018 Issue

Updated on October 17, 2018

[snip]

On June 24, 1978, Gingrich stood to address a gathering of College Republicans at a Holiday Inn near the Atlanta airport. It was a natural audience for him. At 35, he was more youthful-looking than the average congressional candidate, with fashionably robust sideburns and a cool-professor charisma that had made him one of the more popular faculty members at West Georgia College. But Gingrich had not come to deliver an academic lecture to the young activists before him—he had come to foment revolution.

“One of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty,” he told the group. “We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal, and faithful, and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around the campfire but are lousy in politics.” For their party to succeed, Gingrich went on, the next generation of Republicans would have to learn to “raise hell,” to stop being so “nice,” to realize that politics was, above all, a cutthroat “war for power”—and to start acting like it.

The speech received little attention at the time. Gingrich was, after all, an obscure, untenured professor whose political experience consisted of two failed congressional bids. But when, a few months later, he was finally elected to the House of Representatives on his third try, he went to Washington a man obsessed with becoming the kind of leader he had described that day in Atlanta. The GOP was then at its lowest point in modern history. Scores of Republican lawmakers had been wiped out in the aftermath of Watergate, and those who’d survived seemed, to Gingrich, sadly resigned to a “permanent minority” mind-set. “It was like death,” he recalls of the mood in the caucus. “They were morally and psychologically shattered.”

But Gingrich had a plan. The way he saw it, Republicans would never be able to take back the House as long as they kept compromising with the Democrats out of some high-minded civic desire to keep congressional business humming along. His strategy was to blow up the bipartisan coalitions that were essential to legislating, and then seize on the resulting dysfunction to wage a populist crusade against the institution of Congress itself. “His idea,” says Norm Ornstein, a political scientist who knew Gingrich at the time, “was to build toward a national election where people were so disgusted by Washington and the way it was operating that they would throw the ins out and bring the outs in.”

[snip]

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/newt-gingrich-says-youre-welcome/570832/

What you see unfolding in the House of Representatives right now is a culmination of the addled brain of Newt Gingrich, who is STILL working in the background to stoke the chaos (including playing an integral part in the insurrection).

[a kennedy]

30. It just burns my ears when I hear that democrat party. 🤬 🤬 🤬

[BumRushDaShow]

32. It's a signature "talking point"

that is also code to identify themselves to each other.

Which is why when our President has now been consistently using the term "MAGA" to tar them, it has the same effect to them because it generalizes their entire party as that, even if he says it as "MAGA Republicans" (and many of us add the cherry on top by using "MAGat" ).

[sarisataka]

9. I assume anyone intentionally saying Democrat

Instead of Democratic is attempting to get a reaction out of me. I refuse to give them the satisfaction.

[Iwasthere]

44. It should get a reaction out of you

And that reaction should be to tell them "It's the Democratic part NOT Democrat party".

[hlthe2b]

12. You don't get it because you don't know the history of its use as abuse

Last edited Fri Jan 6, 2023, 11:51 AM - Edit history (1)

made particularly fashionable by Newt Gingrich. Please educate yourself. It is a pejorative. I give newer DUers benefit-of-the-doubt the first time. After that I assume they are trolling with RW memes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)
Democrat Party is an epithet for the Democratic Party of the United States, used in a disparaging fashion by the party's opponents. While the term has been used in a non-hostile way, it has grown in its negative use since the 1940s, in particular by members of the Republican Party—in party platforms, partisan speeches, and press releases—as well as by conservative commentators and third party politicians.[1][2][3]


Why do opponents of the Democrats keep calling it ‘the Democrat Party’?
https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-aud-nw-the-democrat-party-20210227-bhij5j3mrrabtdctiqlo6zccru-story.html

https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2010/03/26/114585414/since-when-did-it-become-the-democrat-party
There are often several ways to irritate people — some direct, some more cryptic. Republicans have a way of irritating Democrats that also has frustrated some listeners.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-democrat-party_n_603a7cdcc5b6829715009023
Here's Why Conservatives Are Always Saying The Name Of The Democratic Party Wrong
"The Democrat Party" is a label that some say goes beyond mere incivility. "It's used as almost like a curse word," said one GOP state judge.

[themaguffin]

13. THERE IS NO "DEMOCRAT" party. Period.

[UTUSN]

15. When the GINGRICH mob took over the House in '95, their a-hole pollster Frank LUNTZ

became their propaganda guru, developing talking points using his gimmick of focus groups, a veneer of social science pap, testing how words sounded with negative or positive connotations.

He put out a glossary of words for Repukes to use, favorable ones for their talking points, negative ones to apply to Dems.

He decreed that using "Democrat" (a noun) in places where "Democratic" (an adjective) belonged aroused negative reactions in people. In a sense, the negativity is correct on the basis that an ungrammatical usage grates on the ear.

It became the norm for wingnuts to use Democrat that way just to irritate us.

It is very definitely a jerk no-no.

[UTUSN]

36. Or Rush LIMBOsevic - who single-handedly resussitated the Rightwing movement

The John BIRCHers and GOLDWATER had been discredited until RAYGUN, then LIMBOsevic burst on the scene. He was crucial in the GINGRICH rise.

In my old age everything reminds me of mortality, but the fading away of RAYGUN that the younger wingnuts don't even know and the fleeting fame of LIMBOsevic, who loomed so large yet just evaporated with death - nobody mentions him or his "legacy". I luerve it!

[Scrivener7]

20. The best way to make them crazy would be to completely ignore it when it

is used as a slur.

[newdayneeded]

24. In a different way,

that's exactly what I'm doing. With having zero outrage toward it, it doesn't mean anything to me. So, it's a type of ignoring.

[Scrivener7]

27. Yes. Exactly. My maga relative tried this on me. Kept verbally emphasizing

the word more and more when I didn't take the bait. Eventually it was so pronounced that I asked if they had a cold.

It's not a thing they do anymore.

[Maeve]

21. I am a Democrat. I belong to the Democratic Party. Words matter

They would take it most unkindly if I referred to theirs as the "Repub Party"

[ananda]

29. Democratic is the only correct term.

The word Democrat as an adjective was started
by the Delay Reeps, and it was meant to sound
ugly.

[AnnaLee]

34. I take things as they are meant.

Disrespect has become a handle of the disrespectable.

[UTUSN]

38. & both, referring to the political party, are capitalized. Small "d" is for the form of government.

[Whiskeytide]

40. I try to avoid a reaction so as not to satisfy their goal ...

… of getting one. But when I hear it clearly used with a pejorative intent, I immediately assume the speaker is a trolling idiot, and disregard anything they say as blabbering hot air.

I have on occasion smiled and said that if they can’t learn to speak English, they should go back where they came from.

[live love laugh]

43. Pretty sure most don't know or care about the difference. I don't.

[Fiendish Thingy]

45. Democrat is a noun, Democratic is an adjective. Nt

[niyad]

46. Democrat is a noun. Democratic is an adjective. DemocRAT party is a deliberate

gop slur. Very simple. You are being insulted every time you hear, and allow, "democrat party".

[W_HAMILTON]

49. Because it's a slur used by Republicans.

Do you see the difference in, say, calling someone a Jewish doctor vs. a Jew doctor?

I bet you can easily see the slur there.

It is the same difference with the Democratic/Democrat, which is why Republicans do it.

[betsuni]

59. +1

[MrsCoffee]

51. Cool story.

[betsuni]

58. +1

[Caliman73]

52. What is your name?

Would you like someone to call you deliberately by a different name?

If you frequent this website, most likely you are a member of the the Democratic Party. When you vote, you vote for candidates from the Democratic Party. As a short hand, because of the way people use language, we are not Democratics, we are Democrats but we do not belong to the "Democrat Party". That is a term that Conservatives and their political vehicle, the Republican Party, have chosen to use to once again, DELIBERATELY call members of the Democratic Party by the wrong name.

Again, I ask you, What is your name and would you be okay with me knowing exactly what your name is, but choosing to call you by a different name just for the purpose of pissing you off?

It isn't like calling a Chevrolet a Chevy. Those are two monikers that the owners and makers of the car line have accepted and called themselves. It would be like someone who owns a Chevrolet Silverado being asked, "How's your F-150?" repeatedly and deliberately.

[betsuni]

57. +1

[Tribetime]

55. I've always wondered this myself..ty

[Solomon]

64. Well I hope you get it now.

[iemanja]

65. It's a question of basic literacy

Democrat is a noun; democratic or Democratic are adjectives. Republicans use the noun in the place of the adjective for two reasons: 1) as a slur, because they don't want to infer that Democrats are democratic; and 2) they're illiterate morons.

I've had Democrats insist using the word Democrat at all, instead of Democratic, is a Republican talking point, despite the fact a noun is called for in the sentence. That too is grammatically incorrect.

[Wednesdays]

66. When you hear any Democratic member of Congress, or

President Joe Biden, or President Barak Obama say the phrase, "Democrat Party," please let us know.

[malaise]

67. Simple

It is the Democratic Party made up of Democrats.
No one else gets to redefine the party. It is a ReTHUG slur.
I wish Democrats would correct them every time they say Democrat instead of Democratic or simply call them what they are - ReTHUGs with emphasis on the thugs.

[GoCubsGo]

68. No, it is not the same as "Chevy" vs. "Chevrolet.

"Chevy" is a nickname for "Chevrolet." We are the Democratic Party. Period. The end. "Democrat Party" is a childish slur used by Republicans to emphasize the "rat" part of "Democratic Party." It is also highly disrespectful. You might be okay with being disrespected, but the rest of us are not.