Fairly predicable. Coons is the erudite egghead in the bunch. Carney knows enough words to give a good pep talk to a JV football team and after 80 years in politics, Carper naturally speaks down to everyone. These are the findings of Sunlight Labs which crunched the numbers. Among their macro-findings, Congress talk more dumb this year.
Today’s Congress speaks at about a 10.6 grade level, down from a high of 11.5 in 2005. By comparison, the U.S. Constitution is written at a 17.8 grade level, the Federalist Papers at a 17.1 grade level and the Declaration of Independence at a 15.1 grade level. The Flesch-Kincaid test was used to conduct the analysis, which equates higher-grade levels with longer words and longer sentences.