Dear Reader (Including Ted Cruz, assuming Tucker gives him permission),

Apparently, there’s a hilarious debate in Democratic ovals and rhomboids (who says people talk only in “circles” anyway?), about whether Democratic politicians should use the word “transformative”  or “transformational” to describe the Build Back Better bill. 

The whole thing is very weird to me because even a logophile like myself fails to see a significant difference between the two words, at least not for political purposes. One means a radical change of some kind, usually positive, and the other is an adjective that describes, uh, transformative things. Also, last I checked, Build Back Better—while not wholly dead—is, as Miracle Max might say, “mostly dead.” So why Democrats should be talking about it at all is a bit of a mystery to me. 

Lastly, color me dubious that using “transformative” loses public support for BBB but “transformational” doesn’t—or vice versa. I’d love to meet the voter who is opposed to the massive “human infrastructure” bill when told the most apt suffix to the prefix “trans” is “formative” but suddenly supports it with the abracadabra suffix “formational.”