Posted on 07/23/2007 5:20:22 AM PDT by Loyal Buckeye
Democrats finally have a prophet who can lead them to the promised land of winning national elections.
In one exceptionally clear 400-page volume, Drew Westen, a professor of psychology at Emory University, lays out everything that Democrats have been doing wrong. He explains it in neuroscientific terms according to what regions of the brain control political decision-making, but it comes down to this: Democrats have been appealing to the dispassionate, rational, fact-sensitive voter, a being, apparently, who doesn't exist.
According to Westen's The Political Brain: The Role of Emotions in Deciding the Fate of the Nation, winning elections is all about influencing feelings and emotions. Westen says bringing more passion into politics requires storytelling narratives and other emotional cues that powerfully engage those circuits of the brain that recruit and reinforce beliefs.
Democrats keep losing presidential campaigns, not because the issues they stand for are unappealing, but because they tend to structure their campaigns to engage the brain's reasoning centers. The results speak for themselves. In most polls, Americans are demonstrably more supportive of the Democratic agenda, yet Republicans keep winning.
The most blatant example of an emotionally dead campaign was that moment during the 1988 presidential debates when moderator Bernard Shaw asked Michael Dukakis whether he would favor the death penalty for someone who raped and murdered his wife.
"No, I don't, Bernard," Dukakis said. "I don't see any evidence that it's a deterrent, and I think there are better and more-effective ways to deal with violent crime."
As Westen writes, Dukakis answered in the language of "rational utility," describing his concerns for the death penalty's deterrent value. But the average listener heard a different question: "Are you a man?" The answer was no.
Democrats insist on taking the high road and focusing on policy, fact and expertise, while Republicans willingly use unconscious emotional cues such as race baiting (Willie Horton, states' rights, etc.) to win by any means.
Westen says Democrats should not dip into such unethical waters, but they should not shy away from negative campaigning. He says that positive and negative associations engage different parts of the brain, and no campaign should cede half this neurological territory.
During a presidential debate between George W. Bush and Al Gore, moderator Jim Lehrer asked Bush whether there were character differences between himself and Gore. Bush raised the specter of fund-raising improprieties by Gore at a Buddhist temple and suggesting that the Lincoln bedroom was offered as a prize to big donors while Gore was vice president. (Westen says Lincoln bedroom also allowed Bush to draw unconscious associations with sexual improprieties in the White House.)
Gore's response: "I think we ought to attack our country's problems, not attack each other. I want to spend my time making this country even better than it is, not trying to make you out to be a bad person."
Westen says that Gore demonstrated a weakness that resonated particularly with Southern men, who more aggressively respond to any slight of honor. (Physiological tests prove it.) Gore didn't carry a single state of the former Confederacy, not even his own.
Here is Westen's proposed rejoinder: "Governor, you have attacked my honor and integrity in front of my family, the people of my home state of Tennessee, and millions of my fellow Americans. So I think it's time to teach you a few old-fashioned lessons about character.
"When I enlisted to fight in the Vietnam War, you were talkin' real tough about Vietnam. But when you got the call, you called your daddy and begged him to pull some strings so you wouldn't have to go to war. So instead of defending your country with honor, you put some poor Texas mill worker's kid on the front line in your place to get shot at.
"Where I come from, we call that a coward."
I'm guessing that Southern men might have perked up.
Voting is emotional, not cognitive, Westen says.
Yes, this is distressing to hear. But it is a fact that Democrats need to fully appreciate and start acting on, if they want a fighting chance for the presidency.
Robyn Blumner writes for Tribune Media Services.
blumner@sptimes.com
For your amusement.
I laughed.
Drivel..... The Rats never try to appeal to reason because the rank and file are to ignorant to understand. The Rat way is to make them froth at the mouth.
If the professor got paid..... he found a big sucker.
I’ve met plenty of academia nuts that were detached from reality, but I wonder what color the sky is in this guy’s world.
Where has this guy been getting his information? Since when have the liberals done anything except use emotions, "feelings" and pure nonsense to appeal to liberals?
first thing this reminded me of was that scene in silence of the lambs when they found all the tightly written pages of the obsessed maniac
Does the good doctor know what delusional is?
How can that be?
Maybe it's because polls don't win elections.
And as the dems continue to go further to the left, they are going to find themselves alienated from most Americans.
Do these people just figures if they scream a lie loud enough, long enough, they can make falsehood fact?
For example, the ONLY people who made an issue of Willie Horton’s race were Democrats. Bush 1’s campaign made NO mention of his race at all. The Democrats, resorting to their usual diversion and demagogic tactics, tried to avoid addressing the issue of Horton’s pardon to demagogue on race.
Pure and utter nonsense from hyper partisan political bigots so blinded by their emotion based political dogmas they now are even willing to corrupt their supposed professional competence to validate their emotion based political bigotry.
Democrats always think they lose elections because their message isn’t understood. In other words, it’s never their fault.
Like a 7 year old.
So this professor is their new George Lakoff, rhymes with....
The only real man that the RATS have left is Barney Frank and even *he* is looking kind of squishy these days.
And the reason Gore didn't reply in that debate that his honor had been challenged was that Bush's statement was simple truth - the Clintons were selling the Lincoln Bedroom. Gore was actually smart not to directly defend the Clintons' behavior.
Now we can clearly see why liberalism has been classified a mental disorder.
It was also evident that Bush could kick Gores ass. Gore was the nerd and Bush was the guy everyone liked. This was very obvious to everyone but a professor of psychology.
Wouldn’t there be a medical emergency if Jack Mehoff removed the gloves?
Good point. Gore could have said “I didn’t live in the White House and why do you hate Chinese Americans so much.”
Gore would have won the election if he put some distance between himself and Clinton in the wake of the impeachment instead of the ass-kissing remark of being one of the great Presidents.
For example, the ONLY people who made an issue of Willie Horton’s race were Democrats
****
The author is to ignorant to grasp the irony:
Al Gore was the first to raise Willie Horton!!! He did it in the primaries!
He was appealing emotions. LMAO!
“Gore demonstrated a weakness that resonated particularly with Southern men, who more aggressively respond to any slight of honor. (Physiological tests prove it.”
I’m not from the South, and even I could see that Gore is a self-important, sanctimonius windbag. I’d conclude that those “physiological tests” simply showed that Southern men are more perceptive than liberal women when it comes to detecting phonies.
Democrats don’t need to shed their gloves, given that they shed their skin on a regular basis.
No, they have been appealing to the NEA (Democrat Voting) dumbed-down masses who are no longer able to think, and these people do very much exist.
Add to that, Victims™ who universally vote Democrat, and Illegal Invaders who are the larval form of a Democrat.
The entire article is a Hymn To Goebbels.
Yeah, but he is a masterdebater, a brilliant factfinder on the emotional issue of global warming. /sarcasm
LOL... Another statement for our amusement.
Willie Horton was not race-baiting. Willie Horton was a convicted murderer who Michael Dukakis insisted be given a weekend furlough. Horton then went out and, as might be predicted, committed more violent crimes. The issue was not Horton’s ethnicity, but Dukakis’ irrational policy towards violent criminals. It wouldn’t have mattered if Horton was black, white, or oriental.
The Democrats insist on taking every legitimate issue and turning it into a crime against humanity to bring such issues up. It’s the Democrats and their moonbat supporters who are irrational, emotional, and insist that everything be judged on some emotional, subjective basis. They already have the irrationality of Nazis, and the mendacity of Nazis, so they might as well act like Nazis.
Psychologists tend to be the least informed of all Democrats.
Wow just think, when the Evil Dums had control of the South, the Nation had JIM CROW, Poll taxes, share cropping. Just listen to ole BJ Clinton or The Thing as I like to call him, regaling the audiences with his fond remembrances of his Granddaddy stealing the share croppers meager earnings. Oh yes, it was Eisenhower that sent the troops to Little Rock, BJ. If I remember correctly, it was your Granddaddy's buddies that were running around in the 200 thread count sheets, wanting blacks kept at the back of the Bus.
The worst Repub is always better than the best Evil Dum. Look how hillary is just foaming at the mouth at how close she is to totally destroying Democracy.
The answer is ALWAYS NO in Dem candidates. They are SOOOOOOOOO FEMINIZED that real men will not consider them at all........
I am shaking my head wondering if this is a news article or an opinion piece.
Or maybe we understand their issues and have just rejected them. Meanwhile, the Perfesser had to go all the way back to 1988 to find an example, even though Republicans have ben winning fairly consistently since 1994.
In case there are any Democrat lurkers that want the know the REAL reason you’ve been losing, you’ll find your answer here:
http://www.timslagle.com/blog/2004/11/post-election-analysis.html
This analysis depends assuming that the Democrats using facts, something that is demonstrably false.
Drew Westen reminds me of Dr. Jocolpus Bumer, whose tragic story was immortalized by Ambrose Bierce in "The Devil's Dictionary" under the entry for the letter "J," which I have provided in its entirety below:
"J" is a consonant in English, but some nations use it as a vowel -- than which nothing could be more absurd. Its original form, which has been but slightly modified, was that of the tail of a subdued dog, and it was not a letter but a character, standing for a Latin verb, jacere, "to throw," because when a stone is thrown at a dog the dog's tail assumes that shape. This is the origin of the letter, as expounded by the renowned Dr. Jocolpus Bumer, of the University of Belgrade, who established his conclusions on the subject in a work of three quarto volumes and committed suicide on being reminded that the j in the Roman alphabet had originally no curl.
Democrats are not likely to shed the gloves. Their forte is to attack from ambush, to use stealth and deception.
It isn’t the same color as the sky in my world, and I’m about 15 miles away.
See the article in the all-knowing Wikipedia, which reports that the first use of the Willie Horton issue was by Al Gore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Horton). So, the author does not know his own field. Sounds pretty irrational to me!
By the way, the death penalty does deter murders.
Any time liberals are seeming rational, they are probably dead wrong. I can’t think of a single important issue on which the liberals are correct from a rational viewpoint. I should know: I am a very rational person, and will gladly challenge the author of the book to an IQ test. I will beat him even while wearing earphones playing loud rap “music.”
Anyone who writes a 400-page book just to try to make a partisan political point is probably someone who can’t even express himself succinctly.
For example, Democrats hold themselves out as protectors of the poor, yet they are silent about government stealing the homes of retired people to build commercial office developments.
Democrats will forever be wandering in a moral wilderness until they wake up and adopt some real timeless values.
Robyn Blumner is insane....
My scientific theory regarding the modern day liberal theorizes that a liberal is a person who lacks the gene humans require to mentally process reality. The liberal is therefore virtually incapable of taking a decision and must rely on others to tell them what their decision is. This provides a group of people that others can easily manipulate by merely re-interpreting the meaning of words. An example would be to tell them that redeploy doesn’t mean retreat even when the suggestion is to redeploy 100% of the troops. This theory goes a long way in explaining why Lenin referred to liberals as his "useful idiots".
Identifying the elusive human gene will prove my theory. However, until that time much evidence of the premise of my theory exists by examining the liberal positions. The list of examples is to numerous to post but it seems to revolve around one central theme. That theme is that mankind can be improved if only he were not required to provide for his own needs. The liberal solution is to simply require non-liberals to provide for them and all well be well.
"When I enlisted to fight in the Vietnam War, you were talkin' real tough about Vietnam. But when you got the call, you called your daddy and begged him to pull some strings so you wouldn't have to go to war. So instead of defending your country with honor, you put some poor Texas mill worker's kid on the front line in your place to get shot at.
"Where I come from, we call that a coward."
"W" response: At least I know not to look down the barrel of my M-16. Second, this "coward" challenges the Divinity school drop out to a duel.
In the words of Commodore John Kerry, “Bring it on.”
And what is it about Emory University that it constantly produces moon-bats???
Hmmm, I think he really meant to say this kind of voter doesn’t currently exist in any great number within the Democrat Party’s constituency. As the Democrat Party is now made up of a loose coalition of Godless Communists/Socialists, hate America first leftists, traitors, criminals, perverts, race baiters, pseudo elitists, and the feeble minded, they’re only reaching a small number of elitists in their Party with their message.
Red, of course. And the stars look like little crossed hammers and sickles.
In the MSM, there's no difference.
“that resonated particularly with Southern men, who more aggressively respond to any slight of honor. (Physiological tests prove it.)”
Southern men are physiologically predisposed to react aggressively? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! How did all these “physiologically predisposed” men wind up in the southern part of the U.S.?
What part of “When you vote Republican another black church will burn” is the high road?
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