“El-Sayed and Stevens Project Party Unity After Divisive Race,” announced the New York Times on 5 August, the day the progressive Abdul El-Sayed beat out(击败，胜过) his centrist Democratic rival, Haley Stevens, in the Michigan senatorial primary. “Divisive” is now the Times’s favorite attack word, deployed repeatedly to disparage(贬低，诋毁) and try to undermine(削弱，破坏) the astonishing(令人惊讶的) recent advances by progressive candidates.
“埃尔-萨耶德和史蒂文斯在分裂的竞选后展现党内团结”——《纽约时报》8月5日如此宣告，当天进步派阿卜杜勒·埃尔-萨耶德在密歇根州参议员初选中击败了中间派民主党对手海利·史蒂文斯。如今，“分裂”成了《纽约时报》最爱的攻击词汇，被反复用来贬低并试图削弱进步派候选人近来取得的惊人进展。
Four days after that first story, the Times again landed(（此处）使用，安放) “divisive” under “Obama and El-Sayed Discuss Unity After Ugly Michigan Primary.” El-Sayed, it asserted, had “narrowly prevailed(以微弱优势获胜) in a divisive primary after campaigning on a progressive and anti-establishment(反建制的) platform”.
首篇报道四天后，《纽约时报》又在“奥巴马与埃尔-萨耶德在丑陋的密歇根初选后讨论团结”的标题下使用了“分裂”一词。该报称，埃尔-萨耶德“在进步派和反建制纲领下竞选，在一场分裂的初选中勉强胜出”。
On 12 August, the Times reported that David Crowley, who narrowly beat out Democratic socialist Francesca Hong in the Wisconsin gubernatorial(州长的) primary, “promised to leave behind the divisive Democratic primary and focus on Mr. Tiffany”, his Republican opponent. Other stories slip it in(悄悄插入) more subtly. That same day, in a piece about representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez allegedly(据称) distancing herself from “Woke 1.0(“觉醒1.0”指早期觉醒文化)”, the Times cited Middlebury College professor Erik Bleich, who “pointed to the calls to defund the police(削减警察经费（运动）) as a divisive goal”.
8月12日，《纽约时报》报道称，戴维·克劳利在威斯康星州州长初选中勉强击败民主社会主义者弗朗西斯卡·洪，他“承诺抛开分裂的民主党初选，专注于共和党对手蒂法尼先生”。其他报道则更巧妙地塞入这个词。同一天，在一篇关于众议员亚历山德里娅·奥卡西奥-科尔特斯据称与“觉醒1.0”保持距离的文章中，《纽约时报》援引米德尔伯里学院教授埃里克·布莱希的话，他“指出削减警察经费的呼吁是一个分裂的目标”。