Kitchen Tables Aren't Just For Eating On!
They are where Real Politics are Done
Kitchen table.
This word has come to be this kind of Rorschach test for political commentary that has become simultaneously drained of all meaning while growing to encompass every political hot take of the moment. No longer are kitchen tables for sitting at, or setting down the day’s mail, or even for eating. No, no, no, this is a semi-holy location, a hallowed ground that ought be spoken of with the weightiest concern and utmost care. Forget the Room Where It Happens, it’s all about the table, specifically the kitchen one. That is where “it” happens, but for some reason, only for certain types of people and for certain types of issues. They are the “kitchen table issues” that Americans care about, separate and above other “complicated” issues.
The way the kitchen table is invoked, one would think they don’t have kitchens or tables in large cities or in coastal states. They are spoken of as if kitchen tables are a qualifier to participate in the contemporary political discussions of the day. Strangely though, these odd liminal spaces called “kitchen tables” are only found in rural places or in places where folks don’t have a lot of money or have an intimate knowledge of “hard work”.
But, we have to ask ourselves, what exactly is meant when they talk about a “kitchen table issue” and who is supposed to sit at them? Only certain things can be discussed at these tables, and what they are kinda changes based on who is invoking this mythical shibboleth. I always go off into a tailspin trying to figure out what is meant by referencing kitchen tables and why they are supposed to matter to me as a voter.
To start, it seems strange to me that kitchen tables only seem to exist only in rural areas of the country like rural Iowa or upstate New York. According to the media, commentators, and many political partisans and candidates, this is where folks go to discuss the latest political issues - but only certain issues and in certain spaces. If you’re from the big city, according to the narrative surrounding kitchen tables, you probably don’t know what is going on for rural folks. Your phone? Useless for fact checking. Your workplace? Probably an out of touch place where no Real Work occurs. You used to live in a rural area and now moved to a city for a job? You’re clearly out of touch. Oh, you live in a rural area AND you have a kitchen table? Now we’re talking about REAL issues, and you know who doesn’t have kitchen tables? City folk.
Why would that be the case though? Why are rural people more concerned with “kitchen table issues” than anyone else? Do folks who sit at kitchen tables not have the same concerns as everyone else? Do they not care about the environment? Clean water? Education? Fair taxation? Voting rights? Making sure their kids are safe? Even the most die-hard rural republican with their head in the sand still cares about their family being able to eat at the end of the day. Time and again I see analysis proclaiming a return to “kitchen table issue” is a key winner for folks looking to wrest power away from the grievance-based politics of republicans, but why are they only used to preclude discussions about the systematic issues everyone cares about?
Why would their kitchen table be any different than yours?
Social issues like trans rights or women’s access to healthcare? Nah that isn’t for the kitchen table. Trans people don’t have kitchen tables, no, no, no, and we don’t want to talk politics at the table. Black bagging students, immigrants, and American citizens and dragging them off to detention centers? The kitchen table does not abide, that might upset someone. Besides its not YOUR kid and they might have been rude to someone online. Maybe we saw an article about the assassination of aid workers by Israel using American munitions and cover? Ope, I’m just gonna reach over and get some of the potato salad, I don’t know anything about that. This isn’t the time and place, you see. We should only talk about things that are important to us immediately and without much consideration, and that is all rural kitchen-table-havers care about.
Hey did you see how many points Caitlyn Clark got last night though?
Its almost as if “kitchen table issue” is used to flatten conversations and turn our attention away from things that are happening in our community. It is strange that local property taxes and prescription drug costs are often considered a kitchen table issue because they directly impact the lives of those sitting at the table, but the election of the school board and profit incentives to increase drug costs are “politics”. Even though they are directly related and salient to the original “kitchen table issue”. The price of gas and groceries are “kitchen table issues” but the deportation and detention of agricultural workers alongside local representatives allowing foreign pipelines are not. Layoffs at John Deere or a local insurance company are a concern for the table, but the tariffs and economic instability generated by political leaders are simply not something folks at kitchen tables can understand.
Except it is very clear that they do.
When someone tells you to not worry about an issue and return to “kitchen table issues” you should be asking “who’s table?”. For parents of a trans child, their kitchen table is the perfect place to talk about legal issues surrounding trans healthcare and civil rights. For workers staring down the barrel of mass layoffs or AI replacing their jobs, is that not a “kitchen table issue”? For people who want to ensure their children have access to a good public and accurate education, Christian Nationalism is absolutely a “kitchen table issue”. Even foreign policy can be a kitchen table issue because surprise, surprise, rural America depends on exports and government subsidy to function as it does. What can be more “kitchen table” than the status of the US as a trade partner to foreign interests?
Talking about those “Black Lives Matter” protests, banning DEI and black history, alongside the ongoing fight for equality looks a lot different if the people sitting at the kitchen table are Black, doesn’t it?
Don’t let politicians or media outlets convince you that these problems are “someone elses” to solve and do not impact all of us in some way. You should be asking why whatever topic isn’t relevant and why it needs to be relegated to the backburner in favor of whatever thing they would like to discuss instead. You should be doubly suspicious if it is an issue that impacts your fellow citizens but perhaps not you directly and ask yourself, “don’t they have a kitchen table too”?
There are no issues that are too big or small to talk about at our collective kitchen tables. Facts and results don’t change based on your geographic proximity to a farm nor whether you gather at your table located in a kitchen to discuss them. I would say “kitchen table” has become another shibboleth like the words “political correctness” or “woke”; they just mean the person wants to stop talking about it and for you to stop asking questions. For Democrats its whatever they perceive their opposition to dislike and for you to stop talking about it and for Republicans its “whatever I, personally, don’t like” and adds next to nothing in value to any discussion.
This doesn’t mean that every issue is equally important and that an entire election cycle ought to hinge on every issue equally. Prioritizing issues is what we should expect from any competent campaign or leader. However, we should beware of folks using this conversation flattening language to “return to kitchen table issues” without expanding on what they are and why they matter. It is often deployed as a thought terminating cliché that is designed to separate “us” who are real Americans with our kitchen tables and “them” who are somehow different and crazy and probably don’t even HAVE a kitchen table!
Much like "real Americans" or "hard work", "kitchen table issues" seem to have lost any sense of meaning in and of itself.
But it can tell us a whole heck of a lot about the person invoking it.