America’s Democrats are in a political death spiral, and the ground is rushing up at them in the form of the 2026 midterm elections. The advice given to them recently in a memo prepared by the “liberal think tank” known as Third Way to prevent their becoming a smoking hole in the ground is simply hilarious. But the reporting about the memo by liberal media might even be funnier.
The memo oddly depicts at its very top a guy with an orange blob covering his face and black squiggly lines drawn over the orange blob. I decipher this – because one is forced to decipher the artwork – that the guy is supposed to represent your average Democrat obsessed with Donald Trump, represented by the orange blob, and the black lines meant to represent the contorted, chaotic, fragmented thinking of prominent Democratic activists and politicians obsessed with the amazing success of the “Orange Man.”
The quotes used by Politico in its report about the Third Way memo from some Democrats are almost parodic, because they illustrate perfectly the complete lack of self-awareness by the Democratic Party’s “luminaries.” Which is apparently the whole point of the Third Way memo. Politico cites, for example, Delaware Congressperson Sarah McBride, a man pretending to be a woman, begging Democratic colleagues “to just be normal again.” You can’t make this stuff up.
The memo is candid about the problems that confront the Democratic Party. The memo sounds like a psychiatrist trying to get a patient to understand the pathologies that afflict him. They write: “To please the few, we have alienated the many—especially on culture issues, where our language sounds superior, haughty and arrogant.” It continues, “In this memo, we are putting a spotlight on the language we use that puts a wall between us and everyday people of all races, religions, and ethnicities. These are words that people simply do not say, yet they hear them from Democrats.” Further on, they note, “Here we are focusing on the eggshell dance of political correctness which leaves the people we aim to reach cold or fearful of admonishment.”
They provide a list of words that today’s Democrats/Progressives/Socialists/Communists use, which they say regular people find off-putting, like “birthing person,” “chest-feeders” and “intersectionality”. Such language, the memo points out, conveys the message “I’m smarter and more concerned about important issues than you. Your kitchen table concerns are small.”
I won’t address the point here that Democrats with screwed up notions about basic male and female anatomy are wrapped around their own axles. The memo doesn’t explore the mental health issues afflicting most leading Democrats these days. Rather, the memo focuses on their “messaging” – which is why they still don’t “get” where their fundamental problem as a party lies.
The effort by the American Left in recent years to try to get normal Americans to embrace ridiculous words, phrases and concepts is nothing new for Leftists throughout time. Radicals often try to impose on the larger society absurd changes to societal norms. In 1793, for example, the First French Republic, which had seized control of France following the French Revolution and the execution of King Louis XVI, tried to do away with the long-accepted Gregorian Calendar. They wanted to abolish all references to Christianity and usher in what they conceived as the “age of reason.” So they concocted a new, incomprehensible and widely mocked calendar. It lasted all of 12 years.
Mao Zedong sought to impose his own vocabulary on Chinese society in an effort at “linguistic engineering.” As analysts who have studied Mao’s reconfiguring of language have observed, “Words like ‘revolution,’ ‘class struggle,’ and ‘people’s democracy’ took on new meanings. Each term was carefully chosen to evoke a sense of loyalty and purpose. Slogans became mantras, repeated until they seeped into the national consciousness.”
That is the essence of all linguistic engineering, whether done by Mao Zedong, American leftists or French revolutionaries. As the analysts of Mao’s efforts say, “It refers to the deliberate manipulation of language to influence thought and ideology.”
In his novel, 1984, George Orwell brilliantly outlined the use of linguistic engineering through his character Big Brother, the leader of the fictional land mass known as Oceania, in the dystopian future-world that the book depicts. Big Brother introduces such terms as newspeak, doublethink, and thoughtcrime. The inhabitants of Oceania live a surreal existence in which they are told war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.
In the same way, Leftists in the West have attempted, and partly succeeded, it seems, in convincing many otherwise rational people of logical absurdities, such as men can be women, women can be men, babies are “assigned” a gender at birth, “silence in violence,” and the police are criminals. They embraced terminology that sounds like it came out of the faculty lounges of Ivy League universities. No normal people use them.
The Third Way people are beginning to grasp this. But they continue to miss the larger point. It is not just the messaging of the policies of the Left that Americans despise. It is the policies themselves. No amount of hectoring about the use of nonsensical words will fix Democrats’ underlying problem: Their party’s policies are awful.
William F. Marshall has been an intelligence analyst and investigator in the government, private, and non-profit sectors for 39 years. He is a senior investigator for Judicial Watch, Inc., and has been a contributor to Townhall, American Thinker, Epoch Times, The Federalist, American Greatness, and other publications. His work has been featured on CBS News 48 Hours and NBC News Dateline. (The views expressed are the author’s alone, and not necessarily those of Judicial Watch.)