Jason Benell lives in Des Moines with his wife and two children. He is a combat veteran, former city council candidate, and president of Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers. A version of this essay first appeared on his Substack newsletter, The Odd Man Out.

Kitchen table.

This word has come to be a kind of Rorschach test for political commentary—simultaneously drained of all meaning while growing to encompass every hot take of the moment. Kitchen tables are no longer just a place to sit, set down the day’s mail, or eat. 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 this kind of table. 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” Americans supposedly care about, separate from and above other “complicated” issues.

The way the kitchen table is invoked, one would think Americans don’t have them in large cities or in coastal states. It’s as if having one makes a person qualified to weigh in on the political discussions of the day. Strangely though, these important spaces are only found in rural places, or areas where folks don’t have much money and have an intimate knowledge of what “hard work” means.  

We need to ask: what exactly is a “kitchen table issue,” and who is supposed to sit at them? What can be discussed at these tables seems to change based on who is invoking this concept. Let’s look more closely at why these tables are supposed to matter to me as a voter.

To start, it seems strange to me that kitchen tables only seem to exist only outside metro areas. 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 this narrative, 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. You know who doesn’t have kitchen tables? City folk.

Why would that be, though? Why are rural people more concerned with “kitchen table issues” than anyone else? Do folks who sit at 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 issues” is a key winner for folks looking to wrest power away from the grievance-based politics of Republicans. Why is this image invoked to preclude discussions about the systematic problems affecting everyone?

Why would their kitchen table be any different than yours?

Social issues like trans rights or women’s access to health care? Nah, that isn’t for the kitchen table. Trans people don’t have them, and anyway, 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, it’s not happening to 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 Caitlin Clark scored last night?

Its almost as if “kitchen table issue” is used to flatten conversations and turn our attention away from things 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 school board elections and the profit incentives to increase drug costs are “politics.” 

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 a problem and return to “kitchen table issues,” you should be asking “Whose 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 subsidies to function. What can be more “kitchen table” than the status of the U.S. 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 else’s 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 back burner 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. Ask yourself, “Don’t they have a kitchen table too”?

No issues are too big or small to talk about at our collective 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, it’s a plea for you to stop talking about whatever they perceive their opposition to dislike. For Republicans, it’s “whatever I, personally, don’t like” and adds next to nothing in value to any discussion.

This doesn’t mean every issue is equally important, or that an 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. The metaphor is often deployed as a cliché designed to separate “us” (real Americans with our kitchen tables) from “them” (different in some way), who probably don’t even have a kitchen table!

Much like “real Americans” or “hard work,” the phrase “kitchen table issues” seem to have lost all meaning on its own.

But it can tell us a whole heck of a lot about the person invoking it.

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Top photo: Vintage kitchen from the Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site in Richmond, Virginia. Available via Wikimedia Commons.