politically sensitive labels

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2004 at 05:50:11PM -0600, Dennis Baron wrote:
> As long as we're on the subject, when did Democrat start replacing
> Democratic as a proper adj? as in, Teddy Kennedy is the senior Democrat
> Senator from Massachusetts, or Democrat fundraisers are playing catchup.
> Seems to me when I was a lad we always said Democratic here. I assumed a few
> years ago that this was a Republican plot to recover the word democratic for
> their own partisan purposes, but I hear democratics usin it as well. So, as
> they say, what's up with that?

I don't know the details, but I'm pretty sure your impressions are
accurate: it was a deliberate Republican adoption to make the Democrats
sound undemocratic. Safire must have written about this <tm unhelpfully
vague suggestions>.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED