From the LA Times, a brain researcher is telling Democrats how to win at politics. I completely agree with his conclusions, but he's got it completely backwards as to who's been applying this already.
Westen writes that it doesn't make sense to argue an issue using facts and figures and to count on voters — particularly the swing voters who decide national elections — to make choices based on sophisticated understandings of policy differences or procedures. He says Democratic candidates must learn to do what Republicans have understood for many years — they must appeal to emotions. And (talking to you, Mr. Gore) stay away from numbing statistics.
Democrats have been appealing to emotionalism for decades; it's Republicans who need to learn how to do this along side keeping the facts engaged.
The rational person realizes
- you can't tax your way to prosperity
- one person earning more money than another isn't inherently unfair
- the value of your labor shouldn't be set by an entity not involved with your labor
- you can't guarantee religious freedom by banning all forms of public religious expression
- you can't end discrimination against minorities by institutionalizing discrimination against whites
- you can't win a war against evil by appeasement and capitulation
But when you exploit emotion you can convince people
- you have to stick it to the rich to make things fair
- the government knows more about the value of your work than you or your employer
- we must keep all religious expression of of public view so as not to offend anyone
- we must hire/enroll "disadvantaged" minorities because they can't do things on their merit
- if you'll only be nice to hostile people they'll be nice to you
The whole budget battle back in 1996 when Clinton shut down the government to stop those evil budget-cutting Republicans was based on emotionalism...and the Republicans got creamed because Clinton is very good at playing upon people's emotions.
You may remember some of the old Democrat emotional exploitation that had no foundation in reality:
- when Republicans wanted to cut taxpayer funding of PBS--a liberal propaganda arm that should be able to stand or fall on its own--Democrats said they wanted to kill Big Bird
- when Republicans wanted to cut welfare giveaways, Dems said Republicans wanted to starve children
- during the same welfare cutting initiative, Dems also said Republicans wanted old people to have to eat dog food
- when Republicans wanted to roll back some of the radical environmental provisions that are strangling our nation's productivity, Dems said Republicans wanted us to drink dirty water and breath dirty air
No, Democrats may occasionally miss opportunities, but they've been exploiting emotionalism for a long time.
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