"DEMOCRAT." The right's grasping, stubborn use of "Democrat" rather than "Democratic" is, without doubt, childish, stupid and demeaning to our civic discourse. But does it matter? I realize that everyone knows that "Democrat Party" is a vicious slur, but is there any polling on the term, or focus groups quantifying its lethality? I'm genuinely curious about this. After all, Americans hear the term "Democrats" constantly, and the party seems to be doing fine. And given the absurd doggedness with which the Republican Party seeks to publicize the label, it'd be rather rich if the slur had no actual effect, but was merely a way for conservats to tweak their opponents. Update: Ankush answers my question:
this is from a comment written last summer in The New Yorker by Hendrik Hertzberg: [Frank] Luntz, who road-tested the adjectival use of �Democrat� with a focus group in 2001, has concluded that the only people who really dislike it are highly partisan adherents of the�how you say?�Democratic Party. �Those two letters actually do matter,� Luntz said the other day. So the results from one focus group by Frank Luntz (I know, I know) from six years ago suggest that the label "Democrat Party" doesn't do anything but annoy Democrats. I highly doubt things are much different today.
--Ezra Klein
