CT Blue

There are some things so obvious that one wonders why they need to be said, but in fact they do. An academic has given the Democrats some much needed advice, echoing what a lot of us unwashed have been saying for years:

This year, among Democrats, one such contender is Drew Westen, a professor of psychology at Emory University in Atlanta and the author of a new book called “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation” (Public Affairs). Dr. Westen takes the unlikely position that the Democratic Party should, for the most part, forget about issues, policies, even facts, and instead focus on feelings.

What he calls “the dispassionate view of the mind which has guided Democratic thinking for 40 years” is deeply flawed, Dr. Westen argues. What decides elections, he maintains, are people’s emotional reactions, even if they don’t know it.

…

“The Political Brain” takes a different tack than, say, “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” by Thomas Frank or Al Gore’s “Assault on Reason,” which try to explain voter behavior in terms of self-interest and factual analysis.

“My message is the exact opposite,” Dr. Westen said. They’re explaining “why we should be more rational” instead of “why we should bring more passion into politics.”

…

Writing of the 2000 presidential debate, Dr. Westen says that instead of saying he was “not going to respond in kind” to Mr. Bush’s attacks on his credibility and character, Vice President Gore should have said that he was going to teach his opponent “a few old-fashioned lessons about character,” mentioning Mr. Bush’s drunk-driving incidents, business practices and Vietnam-era Air National Guard service, using the words “coward,” “drunk,” “crooked” and “disgrace.”

Parenthetically, why is this idea such an unlikely strategy for the Democrats? The Republicans have been using is successfully for thirty years.

There is no contradiction between going for the gut and making rational arguments, particularly for the Democrats. We’re on the right side of the issues, and an argument can both appeal to the emotions and convey accurate information. Right now, Michael Moore is showing how it can be done with Sicko. People agree with Democrats on the issues. We need to argue them forcefully. As Westen points out: “Democrats run from every issue where there’s passion involved,” he complains. “If you don’t say anything, you are giving them” — your opponents — “the right to define the public’s feeling.”

It follows that when you are attacked by your opponents because you’re making an effective argument, you do not back down-you keep on the attack. Here’s what you don’t do:

During the 2004 campaign there was a period when John Kerry had a line that said “if we can build firehouses in Iraq, we should be able to build firehouses in America” to huge applause. I assume that it had focus-grouped well, but during those heady days of “spreadin’ liberdee” it was subject to criticism from the otherwise thoroughly chauvinistic Republicans as being unpatriotic or “ungenerous” (which is really funny coming from them) and so he stopped.