Who is your favorite democrat, truthfully? Probably Marx. But the trick is to name the beast as if it were both elementary to any initiate and utterly incidental to a more sophisticated view of the world---where such questions betray ignorance of anything that matters.
So when some smarmy literary socialite slithers up in that confidential tone, as if all this was in the Oak Room of the Algonquin, put on your best Dorothy Parker blase, and say,
``Why, Vladimir Putin, darling, of course.''
CG