Democrats Need to Learn to "Talk Like a Human."

by Chris Moyer

Andy Beshear went to Detroit last weekend and told a room full of Michigan Democrats something that needed to be said. 

Stop saying "food insecure." Say "hungry." 

Stop saying "justice-involved populations." Say "inmates" or "people who've been in prison." 

Stop saying "substance use disorder" like you're reading off a public health pamphlet. Say "addiction." 

He framed it as a change in style, not substance. His argument is that Democrats have let advocacy-world language seep into their everyday political speech, and that it creates distance. It makes people feel talked at rather than talked to. He is right about that. 

But I want to push the idea one step further, because I think it gets at something more important than word choice. 

The problem is not that politicians have been coached. It is that they have been coached wrong. 

There is a version of communications coaching that adds a layer. It installs vocabulary that tests well in focus groups. It teaches you which cultural references land with which demographics. It tells you when to wear a Carhartt jacket and when not to. It coaches you toward a persona that was designed in a conference room to appeal to a voter profile. And the result, almost always, is a politician who sounds more calculated than before they started, not less. 

Voters see it immediately. People are remarkably good at detecting the difference between someone who is performing sincerity and someone who actually has it. 

But there is another version of coaching entirely. One that does not add a layer. It removes one. 

The best coaches help you find yourself, not replace yourself. They identify where you are hiding behind jargon, or speaking to the room you came from rather than the room you are in, or defaulting to the language of your professional world when plain speech would serve you better. They do not hand you a new persona. They help you become more fluent in who you already are. 

That is a real distinction, and it matters. 

Beshear is right that saying "hungry" instead of "food insecure" is better communication. But the reason it works for him is not that he switched the word. It is that when he says "hungry," you believe he has thought about what hunger actually feels like. The word lands because there is something real behind it. The simpler language is not the cause of his credibility. It is the expression of it. 

That is the thing coaching cannot shortcut. You cannot install authenticity from the outside. But you can clear away the habits and institutional language that obscure it. You can help someone find the version of themselves that connects, rather than handing them a version that was built for someone else. 

This applies beyond politics. Any leader who communicates publicly faces the same tension. The executive who starts dropping references to things they clearly do not care about. The candidate who adopts a style that is obviously not theirs. The official who picks up the latest approved vocabulary without understanding why it was developed or who it was designed for. These are not failures of coaching. They are failures of the wrong kind of coaching. 

Authenticity does not mean the same thing for every person. What reads as genuine in one leader looks like performance in another. The goal is not to find the universally relatable version of yourself. It is to be fluent enough in your actual self that the right words come naturally, whatever those words happen to be. 

Some of the most trusted communicators in public life are not the smoothest. They are the ones who know themselves well enough that you can feel it. They light up about things that might not be fashionable. They are clearly more comfortable in some rooms than others, and they do not pretend otherwise. Quirky and genuinely knowledgeable almost always beats polished and hollow. 

Beshear is right about the problem. The solution is not simpler words. 

It is knowing yourself well enough that the right words come naturally. 

Good coaching gets you there. The bad kind just gives you a different script.