"I have it on good authority (i.e. off the record) that leading conservatives have chortled with joy as they watched their Democratic counterparts campaign by reciting their best facts and figures, as if they were trying to prevail in a high school debate tournament."
— Drew Westen, psychologist, Emory University
When Democrats lose elections, they aren’t losing on the facts — you can have all the facts on your side and Republicans will beat you at psychology. Republicans are great at psychology. Democrats aren’t even in the psychological game.
This newsletter is about all of us getting into the game.
• So it’s Day One. Let’s start with this.
Here are two questions to start off with:
1. What does a Republican’s hat say?
I don't even have to answer this. We all know EXACTLY what their baseball cap says, and not only that — we understand exactly what they mean by it. “Make America Great Again” encapsulates an entire world view in four words, and as soon as a Republican hears it, he gets it. He believes in it. It’s who he is.
2. What does a Democrat's hat say?
Um . . .
We don't have one. And what would it say if we did? “We’re For Social Security, Near-Universal Health Care, Organized Labor While Not Being Anti-Business, and We Almost Forgot to Mention Protecting Reproductive Freedom”? That's basically what we've been selling people, but it isn't something that a person can hear and feel.
Is it “Stronger Together”? That was obviously the product of a committee in a conference room. “Build Back Better”? Its meaning is oblique, and it's also a tongue-twister. “A Better Deal”? I could give you half a dozen reasons why “A Better Deal” was a bad slogan, but the #1 reason is that people just didn’t say it. They didn’t even know it existed. It was not the right idea.
Not one of these slogans gets you in the gut.
A few years ago I was phone-banking for the Democrats here in New Jersey, and I spoke with an Indian-born man who moved to the US 30 years ago and has gotten to know our politics remarkably well. "I don't discuss my vote, but I will tell you one thing," he said. "The Democrats don't know how to say things in a clear way."
Let’s work on that.
• What’s ahead
I’m going to keep these newsletters quick and easy, so you’re never overwhelmed with tedious academic info on any one day, but over the coming weeks we’re going to cover a lot of important things that you can learn from and use. Here’s an outline of what we’ll be talking about during the next few months:
Part 1: Where do people's attitudes come from?
Part 2: Mental defenses, and how not to argue.
Part 3: How do people change their minds?
(This is really the key week.)
Part 4: Tribalism.
(Bonus: Includes what the Democrats' baseball cap should say!)
Part 5: Democratic, Republican and independent brains.
Part 6: Image and associations.
Part 7: Issues.
Part 8: So how do we talk to America?
Remember when George W Bush’s speeches were ridiculed by Democrats? They seemed to the “intellectuals” to be composed of strings of non sequiturs. In fact they were carefully chosen sound bites, each of which triggered a familiar need or desire. Like advertisement slogans. The populace’s attention span is short. Go Brief! Go Acronym! Go Emoji!
What about Obama's "Yes We Can" ?
Trump's CPAC speech was all kinds of terrifying.
We've got our work cut out for us...