Wait, isn't "Democrat" used for a single person who aligns with democratic views, and "democratic" used to describe concepts that align with that idea?
Like how "Democratic Party" makes sense; but as in the example "I'm running as a Democratic" does not make sense.
Yes, you are 100% correct. "Democrat" is a noun. "Democratic" is an adjective. Using "Democrat" as an adjective started up as a conservative slur some years back, and using "Democratic" as a noun is never something that anyone with a functioning brain has ever done to my knowledge in the history of time.
I honestly thought they were maybe not a native speaker or just really confused or something, and so gave this detailed explanation after they told me the word salad about "I'm running as a Democratic," and then only after that was when I looked at their history and saw all this astroturf-looking stuff and went oh, I see, I get it, they're just sort of derailing the whole conversation away from the original astroturf discussion with nonsense (and successfully apparently.)
Hmm, can you really make any deductions from that data?
Does the number of people using the full phrase for either party correlate well with the number who don't? Is the correlation for eg. "democratic party" vs "democrats" and "republican party vs republicans" (edit: I know you wouldn't have the numbers, just thinking out loud here)
I think that the Democratic Party is hated both from the left and the right, and calling them the Democrat Party makes some sense if you don't view them as aligning with real democracy. Kind of like when one calls pro-life people "pro-forced-pregnancy" or "anti-abortion".
Like there's probably plenty of astroturfing out there, but I don't think this is a strong sign a particular account is astroturf. Since we are all exposed to everyone's discourse, that way of referring to Democrats could fairly easily hop between different groups that don't like Democrats. Like I wouldn't be surprised if "scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds" makes its way to the right somehow just because it's anti-liberal, even though it originates from the left.
Despite its origin on the right, I think that type of phrasing makes a bit more sense coming from the left than the right, because the right does not actually care at all about democracy, except when they equate it with capitalism, and democracy is like the left's whole deal.
I can't speak for anyone else, nor would I pretend to, but I pretty much exclusively use "democrat" as both a noun and an adjective, for two reasons that have nothing at all to do with my political views (which, for record, are anarchist ideally and left libertarian practically).
First and by far most importantly, "democratic" is the adjective form of "democracy," so IMO it's confusing to also use it as the adjective form of "democrat." On the other hand, "democrat" as the adjective form as well as the noun form, while it does bother some people for reasons that entirely elude me, is clear. There can be no confusion, when I use "democrat" as an adjective, that I'm referring to the political party rather than the system of government.
And second, "republican" is already, in its usage to refer to the party, a dual-use term - serving as either noun or adjective, and non-controversially. My (arguably compulsive) preference for clarity and consistency is satisfied by using "democrat" the same way.
And on a side note - every time I run across this idea, I'm reminded of an old guy I knew years ago who would buy laughably amateurish paintings at yard sales and second hand stores, then try to convince other people that they were actually Rembrandts, because look! See? Right there in that cloud! That's an R! For Rembrandt!"
That was actually a pretty witty attempt at a counter.
Shame that it didn't actually correspond with the quoted bit, so ended up falling flat, but still - nice try.
Protip if you ever find yourself in this situation again - the only way that you can hope to illustrate the purported failings of claimed logic through analogy is if the subsituted terms have the same relationship to each other and the context as the original terms did and the underlying structure of the analogy matches that of the original. If you use terms with a different interrelationship and/or follow a different logic in the construction of your analogy, then you lose the relationship between the original and the analogy, so the illogic of the analogy is just left out there hanging on its own, having failed to demonstrate anything about the original.
Still though - it was promising. Keep trying and you might just get the hang of it.
Against Astroturfing and Social Media Manipulation
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