Zohran Mamdani’s election last November triggered an instant backlash of op-eds decrying the rise of a “radical left” within the ranks of the Democratic Party. Abdul El-Sayed’s recent victory in Michigan provoked a similar response, with self-anointed experts warning direly that the successes of the Party’s “insurgent left” are paving the way for disastrous Republican victories in 2026 and 2028.

The problem with these doomsayers’ predictions isn’t so much that they’re wrong — which we won’t know until November — as that they depend on political terminology that’s outdated, crude, and self-defeating. I’m speaking of the terms “left,” “right,” and “center,” but especially the term “left,” since that’s the one that today’s critics of the progressive movement wield like a bludgeon against candidates they don’t like.

Take “Bernie Sanders Is Not Doing the Democrats Any Favors” by Matthew Yglesias in The New York Times on Aug. 6. The first half of the essay argues that “the insurgent left” has succeeded in part because it spreads “misleading narratives about the Democratic Party.” Yglesias points out, by way of example, that Bernie Sanders stood by Joe Biden to the bitter end.

But the thrust of the essay cuts in a different direction, arguing that El-Sayed is a “leftist” who’s part of a “left insurgency” that’s carrying the Party in a “leftward” direction, which is not good because, “the [Democratic] party is already suffering from dismal favorability ratings. And broadly speaking, a leftward tilt of the Democratic Party is not what voters want.”

The only evidence Yglesias presents for this claim is “a June New York Times/Siena poll of voters in the Senate battleground states [finding] that 53% of likely voters think Democrats are too far to the left.”

A reading of the poll reveals, however, that without making any effort to define the terms, it poses only these two questions about the “left” and “right”:

Do you think the Democratic Party is too far to the left? (53% said “yes”)

Do you think the Republican Party is too far to the right? (47% said “yes”)

But what exactly do these 53% have in mind when they think of Democrats as being “too far to the left?”

That Democrats want to raise taxes on large corporations? That they support Medicare for all? That they want to raise the minimum wage, or require universal background checks for gun sales?

According to numerous polls, 65-85% of voters support these policies, and most don’t consider themselves to be leftists.

Instead, when asked if they think the Democratic Party is “too far to the left,” they’re reacting to a trigger word whose meaning was forged in the anti-communist fervor of the Cold War and still carries connotations of being godless and un-American. For decades, Republicans have relentlessly affixed that label to Democratic Party candidates in order to defeat these policies.

Which is why pundits and politicians who favor the Democratic Party — and journalists who wish to remain neutral — should stop using that word and shackling candidates they don’t like to it. If Yglesias had pointed to the specific policies of El-Sayed’s that he thought would repel voters nationwide, that would have been productive. Instead, he hung the sign “leftist” around El-Sayed’s neck and then argued that too many Americans will distrust him because he’s a leftist. That’s a self-fulfilling prophecy if I ever heard one.

But the problem goes deeper than circular reasoning. It’s that we’re all imprisoning ourselves in outdated and meaningless political categories.

Many progressive Democrats I know, including many supporters of Mamdani and El-Sayed, use these terms themselves, accusing some Democrats of being “too centrist,” and others of being “on the right.”

Yet no matter who uses these words, without definition they’re just empty vehicles of disparagement or praise, devoid of actual meaning, and worse than useless when it comes to political analysis and organizing.

So let’s throw “left” (along with “center” and “right”) into the dustbin of history. Calling Democrats “leftists” and bemoaning a “left insurgency” is a gift to Republicans — unwise if you’re a Democrat, and unfair if you’re neutral. Let’s focus instead on what really matters: the policies we favor and the candidates who will fight for them.

Nick Bromell is an Emeritus Professor of English at UMass Amherst and the founder of We Stand Together: Grassroots Democrats in Alliance Across America.