Lakoff vs. Kroeger = Dueling Diagnoses?

[Linette]

One analyst has offered an opinion on the comparative value of the different diagnoses George Lakoff and James Kroeger present to the Democratic Party. Joe Magid generally defends Lakoff’s contribution against the claim made by some that Kroeger’s analysis is "better than Lakoff." In the end, he concludes that both are needed to return the Democratic Party back to majority status:

"...storytelling is extremely powerful and Democrats must regain this critical skill. Lakoff provides a style guide as well as a content primer for stories. Kroeger provides insight into story teller traits needed to get the listener to both buy into our stories and reject that of our opponents."

Is he right? Or is Kroeger’s analysis "better than Lakoff?" Or are they both meaningless because the Repugnicans steal elections no matter what we do?

[blondeatlast]

1. Can you point me to the "one analyst" since I've read both

Lakoff and Kroeger?

I'm far more interested in why this analyst feels the need to create another split between Democrats...

Edit: okay, the analyst is named--where do I find him?

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. Follow the "made some" link.

[orwell]

2. It's the Voting Machines

Unless they get control over that mess, the rest is meaningless.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. Yes, Voter Verified Ballots needed, but swamp them with a flood of votes:

If we swamp the Republicans with votes, we can flood them out of office even if some number of machines are rigged. The more votes, the more obvious any rigging becomes and the more likely they would be caught in the act, for which there would be hell to pay. On the other hand, the more votes, the less likely they will be inclined to rig the vote anyway, and the fewer marginal cases there will be.

Voter Verified Balloting (VVB) is the way to combat Black Box Voting (BBV), but either way, you can't win without votes and you can win more easily with a flood of votes.

Republicans out 2006!

[orwell]

7. In the 2002 Election...

in Georgia there were double digit swings from polls conducted right before the vote to the results in the election in both the US Senate (Max Cleland) and the State Governor (Barnes) races. I believe the swing was over 15% in both races. In both cases electronic machines were involved. There was even a software patch found on some of the suspect machines labeled "Rob Georgia."

Now in any other country, such a discrepancy would lead to a direct investigation of voter fraud. Instead, the Georgia Secretary of State merrily certified the results.

The lesson...it doesn't matter how many votes you swamp your opponent by, it matters who counts the votes. The compliant media will chalk up the "surprise anomaly" as an upset or a voter statement on "moral values" and move on. To do anything less would call into question the illusion of democracy itself. And that is unacceptable to the ruling elites.

Keep 'em spending and keep 'em stupid. Move on citizen...there is nothing to see here...

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. Excellent analysis. I agree, both approaches have merit and are needed.

[calmblueocean]

6. I just read the Kroeger piece...

...and there are some excellent points there, although one point I don't yet agree with is this one:

"John Kerry should have responded emotionally by calling for a televised press conference, and then using the spotlight to laugh at the Cheneys’ phony display of anger. Laughter is the appropriate emotion for a candidate to feel and express when he is guilty of no wrongdoing whatsoever."

What Kroeger misses here is that the Cheneys tapped into a hidden fear of a lot of rural and conservative Americans -- that their child might turn out gay, and that they might be outed as the parents of a gay child in public. Being laughed at is *exactly* what these people are afraid of! It may have been phony outrage on the part of the Cheneys, but it resonance it had was real.

However, I think Kroeger is right when he says:

"What turned this into a home run for the Republicans was Kerry’s unfortunate response; a written statement that sounded a lot like an apology."

Kerry should've turned the boat into the line of fire on this one, and on other occasions, as well. If you remember back to this debate, the third debate, this was the one where Kerry said:

KERRY: Six months after he said Osama bin Laden must be caught dead or alive, this president was asked, "Where is Osama bin Laden?" He said, "I don't know. I don't really think about him very much. I'm not that concerned."

<...>

BUSH: Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations.

But of course, Bush http://mediamatters.org/items/200410140007">did say just that.

This is what Kerry should've showed emotion and outrage about. It is a truly outrageous statement on Bush's part. Doubly so, because he not only did say that he didn't think about or care about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, but then *lied* about it to the American people. Is anything more truly deserving of ridicule and anger?

Kerry and the rest of the Democratic party needed to show message discipline here. The 'lesbian' hysterics needed to be recognized as what they were: bait. Republicans bet that they could control post-debate spin by accusing liberals of being insensitive, and instead of focusing on our own issues, we caved into discussing theirs.

We dropped the ball, and the fact that even these many months later, Kroeger has forgotten this monumental gaffe on Bush's part only speaks to how well the Republican slime machine can work when it's firing on all cylinders.

Between Kroeger, and Lakoff, and the fact checkers at Media Matters, and other liberal thinkers, we're slowly building our own machine, though. Not a slime machine, but a message machine, focused on the truth. It takes time to integrate these notions and tactics into our debates, to make them second nature instead of something we have to look up in a book. But it's happening.

Personally, I think the next big step for liberals is learning how to use conservative psychology against itself. But that's a subject for another post. :)

[1932]

8. Kroeger's argument isn't very sophisticated.

He says that Lakoff talks about words, while Kroeger talks about emotions.

That's not exactly right. Lakoff talks about the meaning of words, including the emotions they invoke.

So, that's sort of a straw man argument by Kroeger (he says Lakoff argues somethhing that Lakoff doesn't argue, and then he argues against this false construction).

Kroeger says that the Republicans talk about character instead of talking about issues so Democrats need to defend entirely on the character question. Lakoff says that the Democrats need to start with a frame within which everything resonates -- issues and character. Lakoff says that if people have this frame, it will be harder for Republicans to contradict it.

I agree with Lakoff.

Also, the argument about how all politics are about fear -- the fear of the other side winning. That's absurd. There is a great documentary out about the politics of fear (vs the politics of hope). There is just too much evidence that fear isn't the motivating factor of all campaigns, and that it's a feature of a particular kind of campaign (fascist) and that the antidote to it is hope, and that hope wins (FDR, JFK, Clinton) without any evidence that fear works as a counter-strategy.

Kroeger's piece doesn't read as a well-though out analysis of politics based on historical and theoretical arguments. It reads like a criticism of Kerry. Whatever Kerry did was wrong according to Kroeger and he's trying to fit a lot of square pegs into round holes to make that argument. And the things he advocates aren't the solutions to the democrats' 2004 problems -- they did Democrats into a deeper hole (ie, "focus on character, not issues," "Lakoff is wrong", "base your campaigns on fear").

I think the best argument to Kroeger is the Clinton '92 campaign: the Republicans attacked Clinton's character mercilessly, but Clinton was able present an argument about issues that resonated on every level (his biography, his campaign speeches, and the way Americans were actually living their lives in a Bush America) and people chose Clinton -- the boy from Hope, who didn't rely on fear at all -- over Bush.

[calmblueocean]

9. That's not quite how I read it.

Essentially, Lakoff says "It's all in the words you say", while Kroeger says "It's all in how you say it." There's some truth to each. Kroeger's analysis is simplistic, but it points us toward some valuable lessons, like:

a) Democrats ignore negative campaigning at their peril.

Over 75% of Bush's ads were negative ads during his last campaign. Why? Because they work. By turning up our noses at the honest negative campaign ad, Democrats have let themselves be defined by the opposition without defining the opposition. And that's how campaigns are lost.

b) Negative campaigning should focus on character, not issues.

The facts are that many voters do vote based on perceived character, and are apathetic and even hostile to issue-based discussions. Bush is someone of low character, and we shouldn't have been afraid to say so.

One example that stands out to me is Bush's drunk driving conviction. This was low-hanging fruit that the Democrats were too afraid to pick.

Imagine if last year some rich Democratic donor had formed a 527 called "Drunk Driving Victims Against Bush". Families who lost their children due to drunk drivers would've come out to say that anyone convicted of drunk driving should not be president.

Of course, they'd have their own ads.

"George W. Bush was convicted of drunken driving," a mother's voice would say, while spare, tragic piano music played softly in the background. "He crashed into a hedge. It could just as well have been a child." Cut to home video of a cute 8-year-old girl with pigtails opening Christmas presents in slow motion. "My daughter Jenny was killed by a drunk driver. No one who drives drunk deserves the presidency."

It would finish with the text: "Jenny can't vote. You can. Don't vote for George Bush this November."

Emotionally manipulative? You bet.

But suddenly the landscape of cable news changes as Republicans strain themselves trying to defend drunk driving. Kerry's Swift Boat problem fades into the background as questions about Bush's drunk driving conviction lead inevitably to questions of Bush's quasi-admitted cocaine binges, pushing him to formally confirm or deny his drug use. It's all downhill for him from there. Or would've been, if we'd done this. (And we didn't even mention Cheney's double-shot of DWIs yet.)

An ad like this would've given those voters who do vote on perceived character a reason to vote against Bush. What's more, it works to neutralize Republican negative campaigning and drive swing voters towards investigating the issues themselves. Or to stay home. And getting Republican voters to stay home is great.

Accepting the necessity of negative campaigning doesn't mean *all* your ads must be negative, but it should be one part of an overall strategy, and shouldn't be dismissed. This is part of what Kroeger is getting at, and it's important.

As for Clinton, well, tactics are no substitute for natural charisma, which Clinton had in spades. If we had another dozen candidates with Clinton's intelligence and charm, we wouldn't need to worry about tactics. But without Clinton's charisma, "Hope is on the way" became just another political slogan this time around. To be honest, in a post-9/11 landscape, "hope" has a weak, desperate resonance that actually works against a perception of competence and strength. Hope is passive. We needed active.

My one consolation through the long wilderness of Bush Jr.'s presidency is that he has given us a symbol of Republican incompetence that will last for ages. Bush is the anti-Reagan. He will leave this country with a horrible taste in its mouth, and conservatives of the future will struggle mightily to distance themselves from his administration, as they're just starting to do now. Today's 14-year-olds, growing up watching day after day of Republican greed, warmongering, bigotry, and incompetence will forever be wary of Republicans. The future is blue. It's just takes a little time to get there.

[1932]

10. My thoughts on these points:

a) Democrats ignore negative campaigning at their peril.

Over 75% of Bush's ads were negative ads during his last campaign. Why? Because they work. By turning up our noses at the honest negative campaign ad, Democrats have let themselves be defined by the opposition without defining the opposition. And that's how campaigns are lost.

Republicans have success with negative campaigning because Democrats are week at explaining what they stand for (and we so often pick candidates who are not good symbols of the issues Democrats claim to care about.

Democrats should care about class. However, Al Gore, as a symbol, says nothing about class, and Kerry (although I love the man) didn't either. Clinton did. When your candidate simply presents a laundry list of policy positions that don't make coherent sense to people, and if your candidate doesn't embody that coherent sense, you have a hollow candidate and negative campaigning is simply filling up that candidate with character traits that you want people to believe. The job is made easier becaue people don't have a strong opinion of what's already in there.

The Democrats could try to do the same to republicans, but there are two pitfalls: (1) if the central problem is that you don't stand for something and you spend your time trying to create negative perceptions of the other candidate, then you might be wasting time and money. You should be focussing on telling people who you are; (2) the Republicans actually do present a coherent argument about what they stand for (small government, lower taxes, and fists up against the rest of the world). Democrats did spend a lot of time telling people what they thought about George Bush personally, but it didn't stick so much with key voters because Republicans spend a great deal of time fitting all their policy ideas into a coherent argument about who they are, and that makes for a strong defense.

So, to me the problem is that Democrats need to decide what they stand for (which I think is about class and opportunity and about giving every person his fig tree and his plot of land) and they need to start looking like what they believe, and they need to contrast that to what the Republicans say they believe in. That is the only way to make negative attacks not stick. That's is how Clinton survived the attacks.


b) Negative campaigning should focus on character, not issues.

Character isn't something other than policies. Character and issues need to merge. They merge with Bush and they merged with Clinton.

One example that stands out to me is Bush's drunk driving conviction. This was low-hanging fruit that the Democrats were too afraid to pick.

I don't think that resonated well with voters because the Republicans spent so much time portraying Bush as a reformed miscreant (throwing some religious elements into the story). They had created a persona, merging character and policy, that was ready for this story.

But it also didn't resonate because it was coming from Gore. Gore may have gotten his act together long before his 40th birthday, but there was still a wandering in the woods period for him until he went into the family business.

Imagine if last year some rich Democratic donor had formed a 527 called "Drunk Driving Victims Against Bush". Families who lost their children due to drunk drivers would've come out to say that anyone convicted of drunk driving should not be president.

That is something individuals have to do on their own accord. They couldn't coordinate with the campaign. They'd have to get their own money and have the chutzpah to take it up, and they'd have to hope the corporate media were willing to broadcast their ads in the guise of news.

If someone wants to do that, go for it. But even if 527s form to do this sort of stuff, it doesn't change the fact that the candidate still has to spend all his or her time merging policy and character into a persona that resonates with voters and contrasts well with the Republicans' argument about who they are.

As for Clinton, well, tactics are no substitute for natural charisma, which Clinton had in spades.

You always need charisma, but you can't deny that Clinton's strategy was perfect and that it merged persona, biography, character and policies in way that had all those issues resonating so much that voters couldn't spend five minutes digesting a media story about Clinton without getting a very accurate, powerful impression of what he stood for.

Bush is the anti-Reagan. He will leave this country with a horrible taste in its mouth, and conservatives of the future will struggle mightily to distance themselves from his administration, as they're just starting to do now.

I agree. However, Republicans pass the buck so much, I won't be surprised if a third of American voters come out of these eight years thinking, "those were really tough years, with so many factors outside the control of the president -- 9/11. the hurricanes. He was a good man who did the best he could. It must have been hard for him."

Nonetheless, Democrats should still take the opportunity in 2008 to make a very simple, very logical, very powerful argument about what has happened in America the previous eight years, how it happened, and why progressive policies wouldn't have let it happen.