I don’t really get the obsession with kitchen tables. Maybe it’s because I’ve never had a table in my kitchen. It really seems like it’d get in the way.
The top-performing messages we tested have a simple formula. They focus on Americans’ day-to-day struggles to pay for rent and groceries, and the widespread frustration with prices that rise faster than working-class wages. They insist that working people should be able to give their kids a better shot. They promise to bring costs down, make the biggest corporations pay their fair share, and crack down on the people who game the system. Ultimately, they tell a simple story: hard work should pay off. We call this winning combination “kitchen-table populism”.
Wait, have they been talking about dining room tables this whole time and I’m just now finding out? I thought it was like, literally a table in your kitchen, like you’d have a dining room table and a kitchen table.
Edit: I guess I’ve just been dodging this by calling the corner of my kitchen a nook when I lived in apartments that were too small for a dedicated dining room? I dunno why I assumed a kitchen table would be a table for doing kitchen tasks on and not eating.
Yeah, the kitchen table is the smaller, “informal” eating table closer to the kitchen, as opposed to the larger dining table in the formal dining room. It’s an older concept by today’s (US) architectural standards. I’m sure there’s some more formal definition, but I’ve always thought about it as the place where people itemized their deductions by combing through receipts in various media. Or had discussions about other important things. You know, kitchen table stuff.
I guess this is where I’ve gotten confused — I’ve never been rich enough to afford a house big enough to accommodate a dining room and a kitchen spacious enough for a table. Either it was small enough that the kitchen and dining room were a single area, or the dining room is separate and I didn’t have space for a table in the kitchen. To me, this is like talking about “breakfast nook politics” – like, what rich people are out here talking politics in a breakfast nook?
I don’t really get the obsession with kitchen tables. Maybe it’s because I’ve never had a table in my kitchen. It really seems like it’d get in the way.
My kid is a smartass who has to tell me that the kitchen table is in the dining room every. Fucking. Time.
Wait, have they been talking about dining room tables this whole time and I’m just now finding out? I thought it was like, literally a table in your kitchen, like you’d have a dining room table and a kitchen table.
Edit: I guess I’ve just been dodging this by calling the corner of my kitchen a nook when I lived in apartments that were too small for a dedicated dining room? I dunno why I assumed a kitchen table would be a table for doing kitchen tasks on and not eating.
Yeah, the kitchen table is the smaller, “informal” eating table closer to the kitchen, as opposed to the larger dining table in the formal dining room. It’s an older concept by today’s (US) architectural standards. I’m sure there’s some more formal definition, but I’ve always thought about it as the place where people itemized their deductions by combing through receipts in various media. Or had discussions about other important things. You know, kitchen table stuff.
I guess this is where I’ve gotten confused — I’ve never been rich enough to afford a house big enough to accommodate a dining room and a kitchen spacious enough for a table. Either it was small enough that the kitchen and dining room were a single area, or the dining room is separate and I didn’t have space for a table in the kitchen. To me, this is like talking about “breakfast nook politics” – like, what rich people are out here talking politics in a breakfast nook?