Lakoff's extensively written about the need for Democratic candidates and progressives in general to start explicitly talking about values. Also, for campaigns to work at creating more of an overall narrative for a candidate than just a laundry list of policies. It's only his work on the framing aspect that's received attention lately, not so much his work on defining the values systems that right/left folks tend to hold(e.g. "maintaining authority" vs "care & responsibility").
He's offered up Schwarzneggar's campaign as an example of a guy who ran entirely on narrative & perceived identity, and expressively refused to offer up any policy suggestions. Most folks don't have the time/energy/inclination to get into policy specifics, but if they trust your guy, they're trust him to take care of the details.
As he says,
"The pollsters didn’t understand it because they thought that people voted on the issues and on self-interest. Well, sometimes they do. But mostly they vote on their identity -- on persons that they trust to be like them, or to be like people they admire"
which connects to that aspirational bit that the article mentions.
Jim Wallis has talked about several of these same issues over the last year as well, especially with on the whole "onslaught of the new nihilistic, macho, libertarian lawlessness unleashed by an economy that pits every man against his fellows" bit.
― kingfish kuribo's shoe (kingfish 2.0), Thursday, 19 January 2006 16:52 (eighteen years ago) link
Wallis has written about conversations his group has had with Frank Luntz and some other Repub pollsters who were quite open about their m.o. being to get voters so caught in such intense issues that they vote against their economic interest.
As other folks have pointed out, the Republicans have been better that bring the polls to them(gay marriage is the biggest thing you care about) vs the Democrats moving to where the polls now seem to be(well i guess we need to move rightward on gay marriage).
― kingfish kuribo's shoe (kingfish 2.0), Thursday, 19 January 2006 16:53 (eighteen years ago) link
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Thursday, 19 January 2006 17:01 (eighteen years ago) link
That's the thing, innit? If you build up an entire apparatus to both promote & reinforce certain narratives, people will believe them even if they have no basis in fact. George W. Bush is steadfast & strong, Kerry's a weak-willed flip-flopper, Republicans are all about a smaller government, supply-side economics works, etc
― kingfish kuribo's shoe (kingfish 2.0), Thursday, 19 January 2006 17:06 (eighteen years ago) link
oh fuck yeah this is a major bit of it, too. But since when did we start promoting self-reflection and critical thought?
― kingfish kuribo's shoe (kingfish 2.0), Thursday, 19 January 2006 17:07 (eighteen years ago) link
― don weiner (don weiner), Thursday, 19 January 2006 17:39 (eighteen years ago) link
For real despair, look at how Sen. Rodham Clinton is pandering to libs and righties on alternate days. "Congress run like a plantation," "I'd bomb Iran," etc.
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 19 January 2006 17:47 (eighteen years ago) link
xpost
― kingfish kuribo's shoe (kingfish 2.0), Thursday, 19 January 2006 17:49 (eighteen years ago) link
― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 19 January 2006 17:54 (eighteen years ago) link
Please God, take Hilary quietly so she won't fuck up the party with a presidential campaign. WORST POSSIBLE CANDIDATE EVER.
― elmo, patron saint of nausea (allocryptic), Thursday, 19 January 2006 17:54 (eighteen years ago) link
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Thursday, 19 January 2006 17:55 (eighteen years ago) link
Huh? He's only been going this stuff in the press for about two years. Second, there are plenty of other folks who have made the connection, but have gotten shit for coverage(not fitting in with "religious = rightwing conservative" media narrative?), even when they got arrested for it on the Capitol steps.
DLC-candidate-in-centrist-message shocker
― kingfish kuribo's shoe (kingfish 2.0), Thursday, 19 January 2006 17:56 (eighteen years ago) link
very much otm. The change will come from the outside.
― kingfish kuribo's shoe (kingfish 2.0), Thursday, 19 January 2006 17:58 (eighteen years ago) link
― o. nate (onate), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:00 (eighteen years ago) link
Re the direction of the party, past actions indicate the party will be quicker to line up behind someone with Clinton's politics as opposed to Tasini's. I'm not too hopeful when it comes to the future of the Dems.
― TRG (TRG), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:02 (eighteen years ago) link
do you think it's necessary for dems to use the religious right's language ("morals" and "values")? would a less-loaded word like "ethics" skew too liberal?
― stockholm cindy (winter version) (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:03 (eighteen years ago) link
my question is, when do they not? unless a voter has completely descended into some cynical nihilism, of course.
i mean, yeah, "values" has come to signify a very specific set of values, which just goes to further show that democratic types do need to start talking about theirs.
― kingfish kuribo's shoe (kingfish 2.0), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:05 (eighteen years ago) link
― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:06 (eighteen years ago) link
― TRG (TRG), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:07 (eighteen years ago) link
I don't think it's necessarily too liberal, but it definitely lacks the primal grip of "values"
I mean, we all value things, right? We value ethics, for example, since honesty, fairness, & justice are core principles.
― kingfish kuribo's shoe (kingfish 2.0), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:08 (eighteen years ago) link
not necessarily, but quite possibly, and yes, respectively.
― gabbneb (gabbneb), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:09 (eighteen years ago) link
name one
― TRG (TRG), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:10 (eighteen years ago) link
― gabbneb (gabbneb), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:11 (eighteen years ago) link
I don't think they need to use the words "morals" or "values" at all, but on the other hand I don't think "ethics" is necesarily what we're talking about either. "Ethics" to me connotes a branch of philosophy - ie., sterile debates which have little to do with people's daily lives. What they need to communicate is that they are decent people who voters would admire/like/agree with. If the voters think you're a good person, then they will gloss over lots of little policy details. If they don't think you're a good person, you can promise them the moon, but they won't believe you. Unfortunately, things like abortion and gay rights have become a short-hand for some voters on figuring out whether a candidate has values. That is probably a moral fundamentalist fringe whose votes the Dems will not be able to win and probably shouldn't even want to win. But they do need to capture the votes of more moderate voters who worry about rampant sex on TV and loose values among their childrens' friends.
― o. nate (onate), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:11 (eighteen years ago) link
― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:12 (eighteen years ago) link
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:14 (eighteen years ago) link
― TRG (TRG), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:15 (eighteen years ago) link
also, we should probably clarify who we're talking about here. "Dems" includes everybody from DLC types like Clinton & Biden to guys like Feingold...
Also, it seems like we're only limiting this to talking about a very specific range of national politics(akin to referring to states as "red" or "blue"), but this doesn't address the other aspects, like state elections(e.g. Montana electing a Democratic governor and Democratic State House & Senate)
― kingfish kuribo's shoe (kingfish 2.0), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:16 (eighteen years ago) link
There was some major (spring?) 2005 poll all the progressive press was reporting on that found Americans favor Canada-style healthcare, taxing the rich, full domestic rights for gays, etc. Was it Quinnipiac? Can't find it...
― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:16 (eighteen years ago) link
It's pretty simple - the population is much more interested in pulling troops out asap. The Dem leadership is not - in fact, many still appear to be trying to out tough Republicans. You know things are odd when it's people like Murtha who are the furthest left on an issue like the war.
― TRG (TRG), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:18 (eighteen years ago) link
yeah, exactly. I think these things just get talked about in some simplified media narrative(again, "your state is RED," etc), and this narrowing just plays into the hands of guys like Rove who are pretty good at taking advantage of such limitations.
― kingfish kuribo's shoe (kingfish 2.0), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:20 (eighteen years ago) link
OTMFM
― TRG (TRG), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:22 (eighteen years ago) link
Yes, OTM. I read an article to the effect that Dean is putting most of his effort & resources into rebuilding the party at the local level, precinct level basically, which seems urgent and key. Karl Rove has prob always been a right wing ideologue but he started out doing direct mail, not working on message or on policy. I am not a huge fan of Dean whenever he opens his mouth but if he's getting stuff done at the ground level, it's about time.
― dar1a g (daria g), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:24 (eighteen years ago) link
I'm not sure which one this was either, but there have been numerous similar studies going back years that support this. In fact the point made upthread about the Dems latching on to movements like civil rights, women's rights, etc supports this as well.
― TRG (TRG), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:25 (eighteen years ago) link
to be really reductive, perhaps unfairly, Lakoff is essentially arguing that Democrats should reframe their most liberal policy positions in a secular language of values and presto change-o, they win. the people in Ruta's article are arguing that Democrats shouldn't just give passionless names to their values, they should talk about where those values come from - family, community, place, country, religion, work, as relevant.
tombot's observation is most otm. while i don't think the work discussed in the piece is free from problems or contradictions, the key takeaway is that there are lots of potential Dem voters who aren't voting Dem because they really believe in the myth that Dems are hedonists, or at least permissiveness freaks, found most often in your big bad cities or somewhere else where people act in ways that folks like you don't (or can't). the Tim Kaine example suggests that if you show them upfront that their stereotype doesn't apply, they will revert to their better nature and vote for you, which they kinda sorta want to do.
― gabbneb (gabbneb), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:25 (eighteen years ago) link
― gabbneb (gabbneb), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:26 (eighteen years ago) link
― gabbneb (gabbneb), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:28 (eighteen years ago) link
xxpost
― TRG (TRG), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:30 (eighteen years ago) link
― don weiner (don weiner), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:31 (eighteen years ago) link
yeah, i think that what needs to be mentioned that since the rightwingers are really good at controlling media discussion and promoting complete bullshit, Democrats seem to be responding to that, as opposed to what their voters actally think.
Example: Dick Durbin's thing last year, where the rightwing noize machine drummed up so much shit that he felt the need to apologize for a statement he never actually made(calling u.s. troops nazis, as opposed to a comment on Gitmo treatment)
― kingfish kuribo's shoe (kingfish 2.0), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:31 (eighteen years ago) link
This is probably the party's only hope. Nothing gave me greater pleasure than renouncing my Democratic affiliation on my voter registration card a few years ago. It's ridiculous to me that positions and the discussion of positions trumps philosophy, i.e. "I'm a Democrat cuz I'm pro-choice, support gay rights, against the death penalty..." Millions of Americans like this kind of reductive thinking and good for them; it makes me queasy because, at the end of the day, positions are stupid when expert politicans like FDR, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton get elected and make a hash out of your precious positions.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:34 (eighteen years ago) link
Maybe this goes to the "values" issue = Feingold perceived (accurately?) as someone with an independent streak who votes what he thinks is right and doesn't stick to the party line.
― dar1a g (daria g), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:35 (eighteen years ago) link
this defeatist, victimized myopia that the Republicans are somehow playing by a different set of rules (or tactics) has got to end.
― don weiner (don weiner), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:36 (eighteen years ago) link
did you read the article i linked? it says that the drift is not on policy, but on attitudes. people are voting attitudes first, and the Dems are still running on policy.
Regarding that poll, I ask whether it polled "adults" (I'm betting) or "Registered Voters". I'm sure most Americans do support taxing the rich. Guess what? We already do that, and changing the progressivity of the tax code more than marginally has always been a non-starter. I think it's quite conceivable that most Americans do support nationalized healthcare (though it would be interesting to see how the question was phrased and how much support drops off if you say some call it 'socialized medicine'), and accordingly there have always been Dems who push for that. Clinton sought to take baby steps toward it, in Clintonian style, and Dems got gunshy for years after given the political fallout. But its time is coming back. As for full domestic rights for gays, that doesn't surprise me either, because it doesn't say "gay marriage," which many Americans support, but not most. But most Americans, afaik, would go for civil unions.
― gabbneb (gabbneb), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:39 (eighteen years ago) link
In your summary, it still sounds like both of these approaches are only dealing with the way Dems talk about the issues - rather than their actual policy ideas. I think Dems do need to change the way they talk about issues, but I also think they need some new policy ideas which will crystallize this identity shift in a way that speaks to voters. Clinton in '92 didn't just talk about issues in a different way - he had some new ideas, like welfare reform, that split open the old left-right dichotomy.
― o. nate (onate), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:42 (eighteen years ago) link
dude, that's what he talks about. that's what his last book was about. The entire point was to make folks on the left cognizant that they had a concrete set of values every bit as valid and cohesive and fitting in with American history as those trumpeted on the right. He's taken pains to point out that what he goes on about is more than just the magic spin words that will ensure the right folks get elected.
He also has gone on at length that part of the problem is that there is a paucity of new ideas coming from Dem leaders, and that even with his newfound fame, those leaders aren't listening to what he's saying. There's a bit in that NYT piece about Pelosi & others only wanting "the three magic words" and everything would be fine, which is more Frank Luntz/spin territory.
I also think they need some new policy ideas which will crystallize this identity shift in a way that speaks to voters.
exactly.
― kingfish kuribo's shoe (kingfish 2.0), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:43 (eighteen years ago) link
exactly. building a storyline around your guy is far more powerful than just a laundry list of attractive programs
― kingfish kuribo's shoe (kingfish 2.0), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:47 (eighteen years ago) link
people are willing to be on our side, but aren't voting for us, because they think we're not on theirs. to the extent issues come into play, we have to, not 'frame' the issues better, but explain why we take the sides we do. and there are a few issues on which we're going to have to recognize that people really aren't on our side. and we're going to have to decide whether we're going to be more accommodating on them, or better at explaining to people why they're wrong. guns are the first one.
The entire point was to make folks on the left cognizant that they had a concrete set of values every bit as valid and cohesive and fitting in with American history as those trumpeted on the right.
yes, i know that. the thing is he's talking about "folks on the left", not the Democratic party. the people we're going after DON'T SHARE the values of folks on the left, so we'll be talking past each other. they do share the more centrist, diffuse values of the party writ large.
― gabbneb (gabbneb), Thursday, 19 January 2006 18:52 (eighteen years ago) link
she’s walking on sunshine courtesy of prison labor
― Goose Bigelow, Fowl Gigolo (the table is the table), Tuesday, 29 November 2022 14:17 (one year ago) link
“The thing about Florida Democrats is we keep learning with every passing year that just when you thought you had hit bottom, you discover that there are new abysses to fall deeper and deeper into,” said Fernand Amandi, a veteran Democratic operative in the state. “There is no plan. There’s nothing. It’s just a state of suspended animation and chaos — and, more than anything, it’s the mournful regret and acceptance that Florida has been cast aside for the long, foreseeable future.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/22/florida-democrats-losses/
― G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby), Tuesday, 24 January 2023 05:06 (one year ago) link
Good morning!
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 24 January 2023 10:24 (one year ago) link
NEW: a PAC fighting progressive primary challengers is funded by one man who happens to be the richest person in Pennsylvania, a GOP mega donor who has avoided $1 billion in taxes: Jeff Yass. Biden’s former campaign manager is the PAC’s only consultant https://t.co/t0p8eunM1m— Akela Lacy (@akela_lacy) January 25, 2023
― papal hotwife (milo z), Thursday, 26 January 2023 02:10 (one year ago) link
a story of two men who can discern which side their bread is buttered on
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Thursday, 26 January 2023 02:37 (one year ago) link
Congress must join the AI revolution.— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) June 21, 2023
― serving bundt (sic), Wednesday, 21 June 2023 23:38 (nine months ago) link
AI President
― the manwich horror (Neanderthal), Thursday, 22 June 2023 00:33 (nine months ago) link
You can call me Al
― Alito Bit of Soap (President Keyes), Thursday, 22 June 2023 00:35 (nine months ago) link
AI Qaeda
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Weird AI
― Alito Bit of Soap (President Keyes), Thursday, 22 June 2023 01:32 (nine months ago) link
AIbraham Lincoln
Dwight AIsenhower
― pomplamoose and circumstance (Ye Mad Puffin), Thursday, 22 June 2023 18:12 (nine months ago) link
AIke was with us when AImerica needed hAIm
― sad Mings of dynasty (Neanderthal), Thursday, 22 June 2023 18:28 (nine months ago) link
AIdolf Hitler
― Alito Bit of Soap (President Keyes), Thursday, 22 June 2023 19:32 (nine months ago) link
Chester AI Arthur
― pomplamoose and circumstance (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, 23 June 2023 03:19 (nine months ago) link
luv 2 have a pro-union president
― serving bundt (sic), Saturday, 24 June 2023 17:33 (nine months ago) link
"This is not an attempt to ban TikTok. It's an attempt to make TikTok better. Tic-Tac-Toe. A winner. A winner."-- Rep. Pelosi pic.twitter.com/ExkX6bxz0O— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) March 13, 2024
― bae (sic), Wednesday, 13 March 2024 17:47 (two weeks ago) link
pokemon tik-tok-toe to the polls
― bae (sic), Wednesday, 13 March 2024 17:48 (two weeks ago) link
Sippin Ace of Spades, I doGot the K Street everywhere I go
― President Keyes, Wednesday, 13 March 2024 17:55 (two weeks ago) link