Democrat vs. Democratic

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is J.D. calling from Green Bay, Wisconsin, home of the Packers.

Hello, J.D., go Packers!

Yeah, go Packers!

Welcome to the program, J.D.

I have a challenge, especially with the politics just winding down.

Oh, goody, are they?

Well, I don’t have to worry about my calls and hearing political ads, and especially the negative ones that were all over the airwaves.

But there’s a phrase that I’ve been hearing, a word that I’ve been hearing by announcers talking about the Democratic candidate.

And they’re referring to the candidate that’s running as a Democrat, and they call him the Democratic candidate.

And the Republican is called the Republican candidate.

Now, I’m confused because I’ve always thought that a person is a Democrat or Republican, and if they’re a Democrat candidate, that’s what they are.

They’re not a Democratic candidate because I always go, if they’re a Democratic candidate, which party are they with?

Because they’re in a democracy, right?

And so it’s a little bit confusing.

To me, democratic is a process and not necessarily an adverb or an adjective to describe a noun.

But I’m just wondering, has it morphed? Has Democrat morphed into democratic? And is that really acceptable?

It’s always been acceptable. It’s been the standard form for as far back as the Democratic Party has existed.

And note that the name of the party is the Democratic Party. It is not the Democrat Party.

And that right there has set the adjective in place for a long time, for ages and ages.

Now, there have been various places throughout history where people have used Democrat to refer to a candidate as an adjective.

Democrat, you know, the Democrat candidate for treasurer or the Democrat candidate for president.

And usually it was done innocently.

But in more recent decades, maybe back as far as the 1940s, it depends on your source and how well you do your research.

It began to be used by Republicans, Democrat, that is, not Democratic.

Democrat began to be used as an adjective by Republicans for the very reasons that you explain, which is it’s not quite right for the Democrats to solely claim to be Democrats, small d.

And that’s usually how they write it, too.

They’ll say Democrat, small d, to mean anybody who participates in our democratic system, right?

And Democrat, big d, to refer to somebody who is a member of the Democratic Party.

So in any case, Democratic is the standard adjective you use.

It is still the one preferred by every media organization that I have a style guide for.

It is the one that I would recommend.

If you use Democrat as an adjective to refer to a candidate to say, you know, the Democrat candidate for treasurer, then you are setting yourself immediately to be recognized as a partisan who is against that candidate.

Does that make sense?

People are going to know that you’re probably a Republican or a conservative or that you have some kind of bias against that particular party or that particular candidate.

And if that’s fine, go for it.

But if it’s not, then just be careful.

Okay.

So if somebody asks me what party I belong to, I can tell them that I’m a member of the democratic process.

There we go.

That totally works.

And that I’m covered.

All right.

Well, thank you very much for your insight on that one.

Oh, sure.

Thanks, J.D.

All right.

Take care.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Jeff Nunberg, who does essays for Fresh Air once in a while, did an essay on this a few years ago.

He talked about Democratic versus Democrat.

We’ll link to that on our website.

And also there’s a great piece in The New Yorker by Hendrik Hertzberg.

There’s also from 2006, I believe.

He talks about the same phenomenon.

What is the deal with people using Democrat where ordinarily Democratic would be used?

It makes a big difference.

That little ending makes a real difference.

Yeah, the headline in The New Yorker article is really funny.

It’s the ick factor, and they spell it I-C.

Oh, that’s nice.

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