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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Matthew Cantor in Los Angeles

The strangest insult in US politics: why do Republicans call it ‘the Democrat party’?

illustration of blue donkeys and red elephants lined up diagonally on a blue background
Haters of the party long ago decided, for some reason, that this brutal act of syllabic denial would shame their opponents. Photograph: Carol Yepes/Getty Images

The Democratic party? Robert F Kennedy Jr’s never heard of it.

On Tuesday, the former presidential candidate issued his latest condemnation of the “Democrat party”, endorsing a bizarre linguistic tradition among haters of the institution. As Donald Trump told a rally in 2018: “I call it the Democrat party. It sounds better rhetorically.” By “better”, of course, he meant “worse”, as he explained the next year: he prefers to say “the ‘Democrat party’ because it doesn’t sound good”.

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