According to my dictionary, “Democrat” is a noun and “Democratic” is the adjective. However, I hear many Republicans referring, for example, to “the Democrat senator from New York.” Is it that “democratic” has too much of a positive sound to it (you wouldn’t want to be undemocratic!) or do they like how much Democrat sounds like Democrap?
I think you’re right, “democratic” has too much of a positive connotation. And “Democrat” has the added benefit of having the word rat in it.
Well, I can only speak for myself, but the reason I do it is that I’ve been of the belief that ‘democratic’ is a political process and that ‘Democrat’ is a political party. Given that the democratic process is generally held in high regard, it has annoyed me that so many people refer to Democrat politicians as ‘Democratic’, since it has seemed to me that they are trying to subliminally piggyback on the warm, fuzzy feeling that the word ‘democratic’ brings to mind. It has also seemed to me to be an inaccurate term because within a democratic system, Republicans are participants as well and are just as ‘democratic’ as their opponents.
There is (or used to be) a saying among die-hard Republicans that “there’s nothing democratic about the Democrat party.”
Lee Atwater.
The New Yorker did a “Notes and Comments” piece on this practice.
You understand that there is absolutely nothing about this argument which cannot be said with equal validity about the Republican Party and word Republican? Unless you lay exclusive claim to republics…
I think the constant, ever-lower fight for advantage language and the ways in which people can communicate about politics is just disgraceful. Political discourse has less relation to reality by the day.
The party is called the Democratic Party. “The Democrat Party” or “Democrat Senator” is just pettiness from certain groups of Republicans.
The New Yorker article has perhaps succeeded in convincing me that “Democratic Party” is indeed a legitimate term for the party of Democrats, but it went too far in its anti-Republicanism and made too much of an effort to lay all the blame for this confusion on Republicans. When has anyone around here seen a campaign sign that labelled its candidate as ‘Democratic’? Without exception, I’ve never seen one that said anything other than Democrat (although I’ve seen plenty where a Democrat omitted his/her political affiliation altogether 
). Now it can be argued, and reasonably so, that the sign is meant to connote that its candidate is a member of the Democratic party and is therefore rightly called a Democrat, it can also be construed that the sign is meant to connote that the candidate is the candidate of Democrat party, thus Democrats are contributing to this confusion themselves. Another element that adds to the confusion, IMO, is the fact that a Republican is a Republican whether one is speaking of a member of the party or of the party itself, so it’s easy to conclude that a Democrat is a Democrat whether one is speaking of the candidate or the party.
For continuity and your continued reading pleasure, please note that I intended to write, "Now, while it can be argued…, it can also be construed…etc.
It’s also easy to conclude who is being a sophist around here.
No, I’m sorry I don’t, for as I pointed out above there is no analogous term for a Republican. The word Republican is used whether one is speaking of the party or a member. I’ve never heard anyone referred to as being a ‘Republic’, and I’m certainly not going to try to lay claim to it either.
On this we can agree!
Pssst, both words have “rat” in them.
Hmmm…sophist?..sophist?..let’s see what the ol’ dictionary has to say. Oh, here it is:
One entry found for sophist.
Main Entry: soph·ist
Pronunciation: 'sä-fist
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin sophista, from Greek sophistEs, literally, expert, wise man, from sophizesthai to become wise, deceive, from sophos clever, wise
1 : PHILOSOPHER
2 capitalized : any of a class of ancient Greek teachers of rhetoric, philosophy, and the art of successful living prominent about the middle of the fifth century B.C. for their adroit subtle and allegedly often specious reasoning
3 : a captious or fallacious reasoner
I think I’ll take number 1, Alex…
given, you know, that that was the spirit in which I made my post. (Are rolleyes allowed in this forum?)
“Went too far” is meaningless. Not much effort necessary. The Republicans are to blame for this confusion.
Predicate nominative.
Look, this is a small matter in the grand scheme of things, but why are you being so disingenuous? The dysphonious adjective “Democrat” (meant to emphasize the nasal, unpleasant “rat”…having it and emphasizing it are two different things) was introduced by the Republicans and popularized by them. Before that, “Democrat” was a noun and “Democratic” an adjective. The Republicans scored a rhetorical/political point, but that voters should know better.
But number 3 is the one that counts.
The Republican leadership doesn’t like to use the word “democratic” for fear it’ll remind the voters that’s what they’re taking the United States away from – a democratic nation.
No they aren’t.
Big deal. Tell it to the masses.
I’m not. I came into this thread and made a frank and honest attempt to answer the question posed by the OP. That I appear disingenuous to you is the result of your own bias.
Well, this voter has viewed it just as I described since at least the late sixties…and guess what? I came up with it all on my own!..Yep, not a single Bushie in sight, and no Rush Limbaugh either. Who’da thunk it?
Further, I have to confess to a certain amount of surprise at the paranoia shown by certain posters to this thread. The ‘rat’ aspect of Democrat, “dysphonious” though it may be, is something most of us who have used the term have never given a moment’s thought to. I mean really, get over yourself. “Predicate nominative”? “Dysphonious”? Give me a break! We’re talking about the way the general populace uses these terms and I can assure you that few people in this country are schooled to make these types of distinctions. Hell, most people these days can’t seem to differentiate between their, they’re, and there, or even you’re and your, and here you are acting like it’s a virtual impossibility for the public at large to misunderstand the distinction between Democrat as a noun and Democratic as an adjective, and that anyone who says otherwise is either being disingenuous or cleverly manipulated by evil Republican word games.
And you call me a sophist!
You see, the great thing about being a truthful person is that you don’t have to waste a lot of time or energy fretting about whether someone believes you or not. I simply tell the truth, as I’ve done in the explanations I’ve offered here; whether you choose to believe them or not is really no concern of mine.
You say that members of the Democractic Party should not be refered to as “Democrats” because it makes it sound as though they have some exclusive claim to the virtues of democracy–okay, then by the same logic members of the Republican Party should not be referred to as “Republicans” because there are also certain virtues to republics to which they do not hold exclusive claim. In other words, the problem isn’t Democrats or Republicans, it’s naming your political party after a form of government. :smack: Really, if “‘democratic’ is a political process and that ‘Democrat’ is a political party”, then republican is a political process and “Republic” is a political party.
Maybe ‘democratic’ gets abbreviated simply because it can be a bit of a mouthful in the contexts being discussed? I’m pretty sure ‘democrat’ is the more common option for names of parties in other English-speaking countries.
No, you’ve got it backwards. I said (and thanks to the New Yorker article I’m no longer necessarily of this opinion) that I have made it a practice to refer to the party of the left as the Democrat party because I felt it was the accurate way to say it, and that the proponents of using “the Democratic Party” or the “Democratic candidate” were doing so in an effort to piggyback the positive connotations of the word democratic.
I don’t disagree. I’m not arguing against the use of “Republic” as you seem to suggest (although you are the first person I’ve ever encountered who seems to want to advocate for the use of it); I simply stated the obvious, which is that on the one hand you have a party where the words Democrat and Democratic are used (and used properly according to both the dictionary definition and the New Yorker article), and on the other hand you have a party where the word Republican is used to describe both the party and a party member or adherent, and I posited that this might perhaps be the cause of some of the confusion on this issue. If you want to start a movement to call Republican individuals “Republics”, have at it…but don’t act like I’m being recalcitrant about it because it’s a non-issue to me (and for that matter, most everyone else).