Sep 02, 2010
If you have not read Drew Westen's outstanding piece, "What Created the Populist Explosion and How Democrats Can Avoid the Shrapnel in November",
on the Huffington Post, Alternet, and other venues, read it
immediately. Westen states as eloquently and forcefully as anyone what
he, I, and other progressives have been saying from the beginning of the
Obama administration. I agree fully with everything he says. But ...
Westen's piece is incomplete in crucial ways. His piece can be read
as saying that this election is about kitchen table economics (right)
and only kitchen table economics (wrong).
This election is about more than just jobs, mortgages, and adequate
health care. All politics is moral. All political leaders say to do what
they propose because it is right. No political leaders say to do what
they say because it is wrong. Morality is behind everything in politics
-- and progressives and conservatives have different moral systems.
In the conservative moral system, the highest value is preserving and
extending the moral system itself. That is why they keep saying no to
Obama's proposals, even voting against their own ideas when Obama
accepts them. To give Obama any victory at all would be a blow to their
moral system. Their moral system requires non-cooperation. That is a
major thing the Obama administration has not understood.
The conservatives understand the centrality of morality. They
attacked the Obama health care plan as immoral for violating the moral
principles of freedom ("government takeover") and reverence for life
("death panels.") The Obama administration made a policy case, not a
moral case. The conservatives have characterized the bailouts as
thievery and Obama's ties to Wall St. as immoral -- as being in bed with
the thieves. The attacks on government are seen as moral attacks, with
government seen as taking money out of working people's pockets and
giving it to people who don't deserve it. Whether it is the birthers, or
the anti-Muslims, or the anti-immigrants, of the pro-lifers, the attack
is a moral attack. The Tea Party cry is moral -- for "freedom" (see my
book Whose Freedom?), for God, for patriotism. Even jobless
benefits are seen as giving money to people who are not working and
don't deserve it. Even social security that workers have earned, that
are deferred payments for work, are seen as undeserving people "sucking
on the tits of the government."
The moral case is not answered just by good policy that will help
people who need help -- as Westen proposed. The good policies --
extending unemployment benefits, help to small businesses, help for
teachers and firemen, limits on credit card rates, restrictions on rate
increases and service reductions by HMO's -- in themselves fit a
progressive moral system, but don't in themselves make a case for
progressive moral leadership.
Why are so many people about to vote against their interests? The
Republicans are not offering kitchen-table benefits. When people are
voting against their interests, more interest-based arguments don't
help.
Westen's discussion of "the center" and of populism in general,
misses what is crucial in this election. There is no one "center."
Instead, a considerable number of Americans (perhaps as many as 15 to 20
percent) are conservative in some respects and progressive in other
respects. The have both moral systems and apply them to different issues
-- in all kinds of ways. You can be conservative on economics and
progressive on social issues, or conservative on foreign policy and
progressive on domestic issues, and so on -- in all sorts of
combinations.
Neuroscience 101, which Westen correctly invokes, tells us that in
the brains of such voters, the two incompatible systems inhibit each
other, that strengthening one weakens the other, and that the stronger
one can have its influence spread to other issues. The "swing voters"
are really "swing thinkers." And it is language -- moral language, not
policy language, heard over and over -- that strengthens one political
moral system over the other and determines how people vote. The
Democrats need to reach the swing thinkers -- the people who are moral
conservatives on some issues and moral progressives on others -- and
strengthen their progressive moral views. The kitchen table arguments
must become moral arguments as well -- arguments about freedom, life,
fairness, and the most central of American values.
What are those values? They are the values that won the 2008 election
for Barack Obama -- and they were not just hope and change. Candidate
Obama made the case that American is, and has always been, fundamentally
about Americans caring about each other and acting responsibly on that
care. Empathy, which he proclaimed over and over was the most important
thing his mother taught him, and is the basis of our form of government.
Responsibility is both personal and social. "I am my brother's keeper,"
as he said over and over in the campaign. And thirdly, excellence --
doing everything as well as we can, individually and as a nation. That
is why we have life, freedom, fairness, equality -- and quality -- as
fundamental values.
We haven't heard that kind of moral leadership since the
inauguration. Americans are longing for it. And those moral values
really do motivate every kitchen table policy!
It is morality, not just the right policy, that excites voters, that
moves them to action -- that creates movements. Legislative action must
come from a moral center, with moral language repeated over and over.
What should be avoided, besides policy-wonk and pure-policy
discourse? Again, the answer comes from Neuroscience 101. Offense not
defense. Argue for your values. Frame all issues in terms of your
values. Avoid their language, even in arguing against them. There is a
reason that I wrote a book called,Don't Think of an Elephant!
Don't list their arguments and argue against them using their language.
It just activates their arguments in the brains of listeners.
Don't move to the right in your discourse or action. That will just
strengthen the conservative moral system in the brains of swing
thinkers. Frame your arguments from your moral position.
In addition, beware of the same pollsters and focus-group-dialers who
missed Scott Brown's moral message to the swing-thinkers in
Massachusetts and claimed that Martha Coakley would win so handily that
she could go on vacation. Just because a message plays well in
focus-group-dialing doesn't mean it will win elections.
Finally, Democrats need a truly effective communication system. They
need unified, morally-based framing of issues. They need to train
spokespeople all over the country in using such framing and avoiding
mistakes. They need to organize those spokespeople. And they need to
book them, as conservatives do, on radio, TV, in civic and religious
groups, in schools and universities. This is doable, but this late, it
will take resolve from the top.
Winning this election will require the right policies and actions,
but it will also require moral leadership with honest, morally-based
messaging and a communications that will not just blog and knock on
doors, but will be there in the districts with the crucial
swing-thinkers 24/7 day and night.
The Democrats cannot take their base for granted. Only moral
leadership backed by actions and communicated effectively can excite the
Obama base once more. Without that excitement, the Democrats will lose
big.
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George Lakoff
George Lakoff is the author of The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic (co-authored with Elizabeth Wehling). His previous books include Moral Politics, Don't Think of an Elephant!, Whose Freedom? and Thinking Points (with the Rockridge Institute staff). He is a retired Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, and a founding senior fellow at the Rockridge Institute.
If you have not read Drew Westen's outstanding piece, "What Created the Populist Explosion and How Democrats Can Avoid the Shrapnel in November",
on the Huffington Post, Alternet, and other venues, read it
immediately. Westen states as eloquently and forcefully as anyone what
he, I, and other progressives have been saying from the beginning of the
Obama administration. I agree fully with everything he says. But ...
Westen's piece is incomplete in crucial ways. His piece can be read
as saying that this election is about kitchen table economics (right)
and only kitchen table economics (wrong).
This election is about more than just jobs, mortgages, and adequate
health care. All politics is moral. All political leaders say to do what
they propose because it is right. No political leaders say to do what
they say because it is wrong. Morality is behind everything in politics
-- and progressives and conservatives have different moral systems.
In the conservative moral system, the highest value is preserving and
extending the moral system itself. That is why they keep saying no to
Obama's proposals, even voting against their own ideas when Obama
accepts them. To give Obama any victory at all would be a blow to their
moral system. Their moral system requires non-cooperation. That is a
major thing the Obama administration has not understood.
The conservatives understand the centrality of morality. They
attacked the Obama health care plan as immoral for violating the moral
principles of freedom ("government takeover") and reverence for life
("death panels.") The Obama administration made a policy case, not a
moral case. The conservatives have characterized the bailouts as
thievery and Obama's ties to Wall St. as immoral -- as being in bed with
the thieves. The attacks on government are seen as moral attacks, with
government seen as taking money out of working people's pockets and
giving it to people who don't deserve it. Whether it is the birthers, or
the anti-Muslims, or the anti-immigrants, of the pro-lifers, the attack
is a moral attack. The Tea Party cry is moral -- for "freedom" (see my
book Whose Freedom?), for God, for patriotism. Even jobless
benefits are seen as giving money to people who are not working and
don't deserve it. Even social security that workers have earned, that
are deferred payments for work, are seen as undeserving people "sucking
on the tits of the government."
The moral case is not answered just by good policy that will help
people who need help -- as Westen proposed. The good policies --
extending unemployment benefits, help to small businesses, help for
teachers and firemen, limits on credit card rates, restrictions on rate
increases and service reductions by HMO's -- in themselves fit a
progressive moral system, but don't in themselves make a case for
progressive moral leadership.
Why are so many people about to vote against their interests? The
Republicans are not offering kitchen-table benefits. When people are
voting against their interests, more interest-based arguments don't
help.
Westen's discussion of "the center" and of populism in general,
misses what is crucial in this election. There is no one "center."
Instead, a considerable number of Americans (perhaps as many as 15 to 20
percent) are conservative in some respects and progressive in other
respects. The have both moral systems and apply them to different issues
-- in all kinds of ways. You can be conservative on economics and
progressive on social issues, or conservative on foreign policy and
progressive on domestic issues, and so on -- in all sorts of
combinations.
Neuroscience 101, which Westen correctly invokes, tells us that in
the brains of such voters, the two incompatible systems inhibit each
other, that strengthening one weakens the other, and that the stronger
one can have its influence spread to other issues. The "swing voters"
are really "swing thinkers." And it is language -- moral language, not
policy language, heard over and over -- that strengthens one political
moral system over the other and determines how people vote. The
Democrats need to reach the swing thinkers -- the people who are moral
conservatives on some issues and moral progressives on others -- and
strengthen their progressive moral views. The kitchen table arguments
must become moral arguments as well -- arguments about freedom, life,
fairness, and the most central of American values.
What are those values? They are the values that won the 2008 election
for Barack Obama -- and they were not just hope and change. Candidate
Obama made the case that American is, and has always been, fundamentally
about Americans caring about each other and acting responsibly on that
care. Empathy, which he proclaimed over and over was the most important
thing his mother taught him, and is the basis of our form of government.
Responsibility is both personal and social. "I am my brother's keeper,"
as he said over and over in the campaign. And thirdly, excellence --
doing everything as well as we can, individually and as a nation. That
is why we have life, freedom, fairness, equality -- and quality -- as
fundamental values.
We haven't heard that kind of moral leadership since the
inauguration. Americans are longing for it. And those moral values
really do motivate every kitchen table policy!
It is morality, not just the right policy, that excites voters, that
moves them to action -- that creates movements. Legislative action must
come from a moral center, with moral language repeated over and over.
What should be avoided, besides policy-wonk and pure-policy
discourse? Again, the answer comes from Neuroscience 101. Offense not
defense. Argue for your values. Frame all issues in terms of your
values. Avoid their language, even in arguing against them. There is a
reason that I wrote a book called,Don't Think of an Elephant!
Don't list their arguments and argue against them using their language.
It just activates their arguments in the brains of listeners.
Don't move to the right in your discourse or action. That will just
strengthen the conservative moral system in the brains of swing
thinkers. Frame your arguments from your moral position.
In addition, beware of the same pollsters and focus-group-dialers who
missed Scott Brown's moral message to the swing-thinkers in
Massachusetts and claimed that Martha Coakley would win so handily that
she could go on vacation. Just because a message plays well in
focus-group-dialing doesn't mean it will win elections.
Finally, Democrats need a truly effective communication system. They
need unified, morally-based framing of issues. They need to train
spokespeople all over the country in using such framing and avoiding
mistakes. They need to organize those spokespeople. And they need to
book them, as conservatives do, on radio, TV, in civic and religious
groups, in schools and universities. This is doable, but this late, it
will take resolve from the top.
Winning this election will require the right policies and actions,
but it will also require moral leadership with honest, morally-based
messaging and a communications that will not just blog and knock on
doors, but will be there in the districts with the crucial
swing-thinkers 24/7 day and night.
The Democrats cannot take their base for granted. Only moral
leadership backed by actions and communicated effectively can excite the
Obama base once more. Without that excitement, the Democrats will lose
big.
George Lakoff
George Lakoff is the author of The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic (co-authored with Elizabeth Wehling). His previous books include Moral Politics, Don't Think of an Elephant!, Whose Freedom? and Thinking Points (with the Rockridge Institute staff). He is a retired Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, and a founding senior fellow at the Rockridge Institute.
If you have not read Drew Westen's outstanding piece, "What Created the Populist Explosion and How Democrats Can Avoid the Shrapnel in November",
on the Huffington Post, Alternet, and other venues, read it
immediately. Westen states as eloquently and forcefully as anyone what
he, I, and other progressives have been saying from the beginning of the
Obama administration. I agree fully with everything he says. But ...
Westen's piece is incomplete in crucial ways. His piece can be read
as saying that this election is about kitchen table economics (right)
and only kitchen table economics (wrong).
This election is about more than just jobs, mortgages, and adequate
health care. All politics is moral. All political leaders say to do what
they propose because it is right. No political leaders say to do what
they say because it is wrong. Morality is behind everything in politics
-- and progressives and conservatives have different moral systems.
In the conservative moral system, the highest value is preserving and
extending the moral system itself. That is why they keep saying no to
Obama's proposals, even voting against their own ideas when Obama
accepts them. To give Obama any victory at all would be a blow to their
moral system. Their moral system requires non-cooperation. That is a
major thing the Obama administration has not understood.
The conservatives understand the centrality of morality. They
attacked the Obama health care plan as immoral for violating the moral
principles of freedom ("government takeover") and reverence for life
("death panels.") The Obama administration made a policy case, not a
moral case. The conservatives have characterized the bailouts as
thievery and Obama's ties to Wall St. as immoral -- as being in bed with
the thieves. The attacks on government are seen as moral attacks, with
government seen as taking money out of working people's pockets and
giving it to people who don't deserve it. Whether it is the birthers, or
the anti-Muslims, or the anti-immigrants, of the pro-lifers, the attack
is a moral attack. The Tea Party cry is moral -- for "freedom" (see my
book Whose Freedom?), for God, for patriotism. Even jobless
benefits are seen as giving money to people who are not working and
don't deserve it. Even social security that workers have earned, that
are deferred payments for work, are seen as undeserving people "sucking
on the tits of the government."
The moral case is not answered just by good policy that will help
people who need help -- as Westen proposed. The good policies --
extending unemployment benefits, help to small businesses, help for
teachers and firemen, limits on credit card rates, restrictions on rate
increases and service reductions by HMO's -- in themselves fit a
progressive moral system, but don't in themselves make a case for
progressive moral leadership.
Why are so many people about to vote against their interests? The
Republicans are not offering kitchen-table benefits. When people are
voting against their interests, more interest-based arguments don't
help.
Westen's discussion of "the center" and of populism in general,
misses what is crucial in this election. There is no one "center."
Instead, a considerable number of Americans (perhaps as many as 15 to 20
percent) are conservative in some respects and progressive in other
respects. The have both moral systems and apply them to different issues
-- in all kinds of ways. You can be conservative on economics and
progressive on social issues, or conservative on foreign policy and
progressive on domestic issues, and so on -- in all sorts of
combinations.
Neuroscience 101, which Westen correctly invokes, tells us that in
the brains of such voters, the two incompatible systems inhibit each
other, that strengthening one weakens the other, and that the stronger
one can have its influence spread to other issues. The "swing voters"
are really "swing thinkers." And it is language -- moral language, not
policy language, heard over and over -- that strengthens one political
moral system over the other and determines how people vote. The
Democrats need to reach the swing thinkers -- the people who are moral
conservatives on some issues and moral progressives on others -- and
strengthen their progressive moral views. The kitchen table arguments
must become moral arguments as well -- arguments about freedom, life,
fairness, and the most central of American values.
What are those values? They are the values that won the 2008 election
for Barack Obama -- and they were not just hope and change. Candidate
Obama made the case that American is, and has always been, fundamentally
about Americans caring about each other and acting responsibly on that
care. Empathy, which he proclaimed over and over was the most important
thing his mother taught him, and is the basis of our form of government.
Responsibility is both personal and social. "I am my brother's keeper,"
as he said over and over in the campaign. And thirdly, excellence --
doing everything as well as we can, individually and as a nation. That
is why we have life, freedom, fairness, equality -- and quality -- as
fundamental values.
We haven't heard that kind of moral leadership since the
inauguration. Americans are longing for it. And those moral values
really do motivate every kitchen table policy!
It is morality, not just the right policy, that excites voters, that
moves them to action -- that creates movements. Legislative action must
come from a moral center, with moral language repeated over and over.
What should be avoided, besides policy-wonk and pure-policy
discourse? Again, the answer comes from Neuroscience 101. Offense not
defense. Argue for your values. Frame all issues in terms of your
values. Avoid their language, even in arguing against them. There is a
reason that I wrote a book called,Don't Think of an Elephant!
Don't list their arguments and argue against them using their language.
It just activates their arguments in the brains of listeners.
Don't move to the right in your discourse or action. That will just
strengthen the conservative moral system in the brains of swing
thinkers. Frame your arguments from your moral position.
In addition, beware of the same pollsters and focus-group-dialers who
missed Scott Brown's moral message to the swing-thinkers in
Massachusetts and claimed that Martha Coakley would win so handily that
she could go on vacation. Just because a message plays well in
focus-group-dialing doesn't mean it will win elections.
Finally, Democrats need a truly effective communication system. They
need unified, morally-based framing of issues. They need to train
spokespeople all over the country in using such framing and avoiding
mistakes. They need to organize those spokespeople. And they need to
book them, as conservatives do, on radio, TV, in civic and religious
groups, in schools and universities. This is doable, but this late, it
will take resolve from the top.
Winning this election will require the right policies and actions,
but it will also require moral leadership with honest, morally-based
messaging and a communications that will not just blog and knock on
doors, but will be there in the districts with the crucial
swing-thinkers 24/7 day and night.
The Democrats cannot take their base for granted. Only moral
leadership backed by actions and communicated effectively can excite the
Obama base once more. Without that excitement, the Democrats will lose
big.
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