Suggesting the Democrat party wants to decriminalize drugs and drug offenses isn’t entirely accurate. Some people in both parties would like to see that happen.
States with vast Democrat majorities haven’t decriminalized drug offenses. Some states have to some degree, but you have to ask, when Democrats has the White House, House and Senate, they could have acted, but didn’t – even when they had a super-majority.
My point isn’t that Republicans are better, but the Democrat Party has had chances, but they failed to act, so the parent comment is correct – no party is actually doing anything when given the chance – just a few isolated people.
[1]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-m-granholm/debunking-...
If your goal is to signal that you despise that party, then by all means keep using it here, but it seems closer to the kind of substantive discourse that HN encourages to avoid it.
To me the -an suffix on Republican seems to suggest the word is about a person where as the word Democratic seems like it is an adjective so Democrat in my mind just gives it a more personified feel.
Conservatives may use Democrat derogatorily but it's still a useful term and in my opinion shouldn't be banned outright from discourse. Maybe I'm missing the context you were speaking of though.