Democrats Shouldn’t Be Afraid of Words Longer Than 2 Syllables

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have spoken to over 250,000 voters across the country during their Fighting Oligarchy tour. Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, meanwhile, is debating verbiage with Politico.

By Kylie Cheung | April 28, 2025 | 12:08pm

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Democrats Shouldn’t Be Afraid of Words Longer Than 2 Syllables

I’m hardly one to extol the virtues of the same U.S. electorate that’s given us not one but two Donald Trump presidencies. And yet, as elected Democrats struggle to fight “coastal elitist” stereotypes, they’re hardly helping themselves when they claim the average voter doesn’t understand words with more than two syllables.

Speaking to Politico last week, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), whom centrist Democrats are hailing as a rising star in the party, said Democrats should stop using the word “oligarchy,” in a thinly veiled swipe at Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who have attracted hundreds of thousands to rallies for their nationwide Fighting Oligarchy tour in the last two months. Slotkin claimed the word doesn’t resonate with voters outside coastal liberal institutions—even as the Fighting Oligarchy tour has drawn some of its largest crowds in rural counties in Idaho and Arizona, and counties Trump swept at the ballot box. In the same interview, Slotkin argued Democrats should instead oppose “kings.” But…there aren’t “kings” in the U.S. right now—so, I have to wonder whether invoking a metaphor would really come off as more urgent to the average voter than warning of billionaire oligarchs, who very much exist and are very much running our government.

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Slotkin also said Democrats should stop being “weak and woke,” or at least challenge perceptions of them as such. The obvious subtext is that Democrats should fight for marginalized people less—at a time when the current president is trying to write trans people out of existence and disappear American residents to a foreign torture camp without due process.

Ocasio-Cortez appeared to respond with an email to supporters sent shortly after Slotkin’s interview was published; the email featured a banner that spelled out and defined the word oligarchy. “Plenty of politicians on both sides of the aisle feel threatened by rising class consciousness,” she posted to social media hours after Slotkin’s interview was published.

And on Sunday, Sanders named and addressed Slotkin directly on NBC’s Meet the Press: “I think the American people are not quite as dumb as Ms. Slotkin thinks they are. I think they understand very well, when the top one percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, when big money interests are able to control both political parties, they are living in an oligarchy. And these are precisely the issues that have got to be talked about.”

Also on Sunday, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) addressed a large crowd in New Hampshire and called on Democrats to “to knock off the rust of poll-tested language, decades of stale decorum,” because this has “obscured our better instincts.” He continued, “Those same do-nothing Democrats want to blame our losses on our defense of Black people and trans kids and immigrants—instead of their own lack of guts and gumption,” adding, “Fellow Democrats, for far too long we’ve been guilty of listening to a bunch of do-nothing political types who would tell us that America’s house is not on fire, even as the flames are licking their faces.” He makes an important point: Nit-picking words and blaming trans kids just can’t be the path forward for Democrats right now—they have to fight.

On top of that, hyper-fixating on whether this word or that is accessible to our supposedly very stupid electorate is a fascinating choice as we watch Trump continuously make up words without being questioned by anyone, certainly not his own party. Just earlier this month, Trump rolled out the word “panicans,” which, from context clues, appears to describe people who were panicking about the impact of his announced tariffs on the global economy. He makes up new words and figures of speech as naturally as he breathes; he rants and raves about the beauty of words like “groceries” and no one questions whether this is “resonating” with anyone.

In addition to Slotkin, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), also recently opined about Democrats’ use of the word “oligarchy,” suggesting Democrats just call out “greedy billionaires.” I’m all for calling out billionaires, obviously, but I appreciate that with words like “oligarchy,” Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are calling out the broader system of inequality that creates “greedy billionaires” like Musk—they’re pointing out that the crisis on our hands is systemic and transcends a few bad individuals.

Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez’s Fighting Oligarchy tour isn’t without flaws, because nothing in politics is, but at the very least, they’re giving people an outlet to channel their rage and mobilizing voters in places where Democrats don’t usually go. Sanders’ communications director, Anna Bahr, said the tour has so far attracted more than 250,000 people. Slotkin, meanwhile, is debating semantics and verbiage in political outlets.

“What we’re trying to do is strengthen American democracy, where faith in both the Democratic and Republican parties right now is extremely low,” Sanders said on Meet the Press. “We are living in the richest country in the history of the world. And yet you got one person, [Elon] Musk, who owns more wealth than the bottom 53 percent of American households. That is insane. That is oligarchy on steroids.”

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