A 65-year-old theory and a fixation on wording: Why Democrats keep circling back to messaging
After another round of post-election autopsies, Democratic strategists have narrowed their focus to how the party talks — even as some tests suggest language changes have limited impact on key voters.
Democratic strategists have spent the months after recent defeats rerunning the same playbook: intensive post-election autopsies, granular cross-tabs of demographic groups and repeated debates over which words or frames might persuade swing voters. That focus on messaging, and the long-standing political theory that underpins it, helps explain why the party repeatedly returns to questions of phrasing and emphasis rather than broader structural changes.
Party operatives and consultants, from national consultants to House staff, have treated vocabulary as a potential short-term corrective. They debate whether to call constituents “working families” or “working people,” whether to describe lawbreaking as “microaggressions” or use other terms, and whether to frame Democrats as “Team Normal” against an “extreme” Republican alternative. These disputes have extended to formal experiments: House Democrats have tested competing slogans such as “America is too expensive” versus “People Over Politics,” and analysts have split hairs over whether to say “poor” or “economically disadvantaged,” or to use “addiction” versus “substance use disorder.”
Third Way’s 18-month “Signal Project” has become a prominent example of the party’s preoccupation with language. The center-left think tank set out to identify which of former President Donald Trump’s actions are most salient to so-called key voters. Its finding, summarized by Axios, was stark: “Shuttering USAID, using government power to attack political opponents, firing indiscriminately, degrading the civil service, releasing J6ers, or blaming Ukraine for the Russian invasion all are a combination of unwise, unethical, illegal, or unconstitutional. But none resonate much with key voters.”
The emphasis on message testing is not new. Analysts point to a decades-old strain of political science that links electoral outcomes to how parties position themselves and communicate to the median voter. For Democrats, the practical consequence has often been a narrower focus on short-term framing choices rather than long-range shifts in policy emphasis, coalition-building or turnout strategy.
Critics inside and outside the party say the result is paralysis. Rather than pinning losses on structural factors such as geography, voter registration rules, or the distribution of the electorate, much of the post-mortem energy has been spent on incremental tweaks: which words poll better, which metaphors land with suburban moderates, whether to highlight culture-war contrasts or pocketbook issues. Those discussions have produced pages of demographic cross-tabs and focus-group clips, but less consensus on which course would change outcomes at scale.
Advocates for a messaging-first approach argue that language matters and can shift undecided voters when combined with disciplined campaigns and targeted outreach. Opponents counter that obsessing over terminology risks ignoring deeper drivers of electoral change, including economic conditions, turnout operations and institutional obstacles that affect which voters show up.
The Signal Project’s results have intensified those arguments by suggesting that even highly negative, constitutionally fraught actions by a political leader may not register with the groups party strategists most want to move. That has forced another round of questions: if cataloging opponents’ extremes does not sway key voters, what should Democrats accentuate instead?
For now, the party appears to be doing a mix of both. Some campaign units continue to refine language and test message permutations; others are pushing for investments in organizing, candidate recruitment and policy proposals aimed at long-term realignment. The competing approaches underscore a persistent dilemma in American politics: whether electoral recovery comes faster from changing how a party speaks or from changing what it does and who it reaches.
As Democrats sharpen arguments and try new formulations, the conversation about wording is likely to continue. The party’s leaders and strategists face a practical choice between redoubling rhetorical discipline around a tested set of frames or reorienting strategy toward structural and programmatic fixes that may take longer to yield results. The post-election autopsies suggest the question is unresolved and that the search for an answer will shape Democratic strategy into the next cycle.