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What Lakoff and Obama Do Not Understand

(TalkLeft Guest Commentary by Big Tent Democrat)

In an interview with Baltimore Group Blog, highlighted by majekthise, George Lakoff says:

AE: Let's talk about the underlying debate that is happening. There is always debate in Congress between Democrats and Republicans, but let's talk about them in terms of frames. Are there major opposing frames that you see at work in today's debates?

GL: Well, I do, but what has happened in a lot of cases is that a lot of the frames that determine how progressives come down on a particular issue are unconscious. What happens in Congress very often is that the Democrats go on the defensive and accept the other side's frames.

This seems unquestionable to me. It is the principal political flaw of the Democratic Party. Interestingly, when asked about Barack Obama, Lakoff says:

Barak Obama: Star pupil

AE: You're a professor. Thinking about the Democratic Party as your class, who's your star pupil? Where are you seeing success on the Democratic side in speaking in the proper frames?

GL: I think the person who best understands this is Barak Obama. There are a number of reasons for this.

Obama understands these things instinctively. He gets it. Some other people in Congress do, but I think nobody gets it like him. Then there's a second part. Many Democrats have a false view of the electorate. They think that if you look at polling data that it will tell you about the electorate because polling data looks at the electorate issue by issue. And there the electorate looks like it's spread out in a line from left to right, issue by issue. But in fact, that's not how people work; the human mind does not work issue by issue.

. . . The things that Obama understands deeply are several things. First, that progressive positions, progressive values are really traditional American values. Secondly, that people who identify as conservatives, who would write down conservative on a survey or poll, often have many progressive views in important areas of their lives. We at Rockridge [Institute] have been studying this and there's a system to it. There are many people who call themselves conservative but love the land. That means they're basically environmentalists but they wouldn't call themselves that. They're people who identify as conservative but are really progressive, not conservative Christians. That is, they see God not as a strict father God but as a nurturant God. They really care about the poor, the downtrodden, meek, etc. There are many people who call themselves conservative but want to live in progressive communities where their leaders care about them and are responsible, and people care about each other and are responsible, and where they do community service. This is true throughout the Midwest and the West and it's a very important thing for Democrats to understand. . . . These folks are all over America calling themselves conservatives.

What Obama understands is that there's a way to talk to these partial progressives in the same way you would talk to progressives in general, namely as folks with traditional American values. And if you talk inclusively in that way, you can get people to listen to you.

There is a lot that is right here from Lakoff. But some of what Lakoff does and does NOT discuss leaves his analysis fundamentally flawed. And the flaws are reflected in his star pupil, Barack Obama. Lakoff, like his pupil, needs to learn his Hofstadter.

Lakoff properly describes that Republicans have learned that issues in and of themselves do not win elections. But what Lakoff describes as "values" and "authenticity" is really just branding and image:

The Democrats on the whole have a misunderstanding of elections, which is fatal. It's the rationalist myth but also what Richard Wirthlin discovered about elections when they were running Ronald Reagan's campaign. Wirthlin was Ronald Reagan's chief strategist and he had been taught that people voted based on positions on issues. When he started to work for Reagan as a pollster he did a poll and found that people didn't like Reagan's positions on issues but they wanted to vote for Reagan. So he tried to find out why and he found out the following things: That Reagan talked about values and if he talked about issues they were symbolic of values. People liked that he talked about values. He was authentic: he said what he believed and it was clear that he said what he believed.

. . . Then there's a second part. Many Democrats have a false view of the electorate. They think that if you look at polling data that it will tell you about the electorate because polling data looks at the electorate issue by issue. And there the electorate looks like it's spread out in a line from left to right, issue by issue. But in fact, that's not how people work; the human mind does not work issue by issue. . .

This is right for the most part. But not completely. There is a significant part of the electorate that does vote on issues, even single issues. The right to choose/anti choice issue is the prominent example. These are voters that are simply not gettable for either party in the sense that the singleminded pro-choice voter will vote Democrat and the single minded anti-choice voter will vote Republican. But what about the rest? And here comes Lakoff's mistake in my view:

[P]eople who identify as conservatives, who would write down conservative on a survey or poll, often have many progressive views in important areas of their lives. We at Rockridge [Institute] have been studying this and there's a system to it. There are many people who call themselves conservative but love the land. That means they're basically environmentalists but they wouldn't call themselves that. They're people who identify as conservative but are really progressive, not conservative Christians. That is, they see God not as a strict father God but as a nurturant God. They really care about the poor, the downtrodden, meek, etc. There are many people who call themselves conservative but want to live in progressive communities where their leaders care about them and are responsible, and people care about each other and are responsible, and where they do community service. This is true throughout the Midwest and the West and it's a very important thing for Democrats to understand. And then there are businessmen who are really progressive businessmen in the sense that they're honest, that they treat their employees well, and respect their employees, and that they would never harm the public, they would never put profit above public safety and harm their consumers. These folks are all over America calling themselves conservatives.

This is simply not correct in my view. Self identified conservatives will vote Republican 85% of the time. You can not woo them away. The data from the 2004 Election demonstrates this:

A first look at the ideological break for voters from the 76,000+ voters interviewed on Nov. 2 yields the following statistics:

  • The overall national break was 21% Liberal, 45% Moderate and 34% Conservative.
  • The percentage of Liberals voting for Kerry (85%) was about equal to the percentage of Conservatives voting for Bush (84%).
  • The moderates split 45% for Bush and 54% for Kerry but there was a clear regional difference in the Moderate vote.

Lakoff posits that Democrats can win over self identified conservative voters. I suppose this is theoretically possible. For the reasons stated here, I do not believe so. But in any event, it seems to me to be a misplaced priority. 45% (and of course this is a snapshot in time as are the conservative and liberal self identifications) of the electorate identified itself as moderate. Does it not make more sense for Democrats to consider how the policy views, branding and identity of the Republicans as well as of the Democrats can be changed in order to attract this large swath of moderate voters?

So what did Lakoff miss in his description of the Republican approach to elections? Why the paranoid and status basis of Republican politics and its targeting of Democrats as the focus of the resentment and fears of voters. For its conservative base, Republicans provide gay hatred, abortion, flag burning and media hatred. For moderates, it provides an image of strength on national security and a negative caricature of Democrats as weak and pandering. The negative branding of Democrats by Republicans, the paranoid style, seems to have escaped Lakoff's notice.

Lakoff's misunderstanding is best exemplified in this segment:

AE: For my last question I want to ask you about how optimistic you are right now. My co-blogger at Emboldened, Matt Browner Hamlin, points out that the conservatives seem to be splintering over immigration and military tribunals, and I'm wondering what you think the prospect is for progressives to reinsert their nurturant values back into the debate.

GL: In general I'm an optimist but I don't see very much being done right now by the Democratic Party that's really effective. They seem to be reacting more than acting positively. They're a little bit more sophisticated about framing but, as you saw on "cut and run," they were very unsophisticated. I don't take the fissures in the Republican Party as boding anything whatever about this election. I think they can patch that over very well. I just don't see it harming them that significantly in a Congressional election.

Secondly, there's a terrible Democratic strategy being put forth which is to say, as Chuck Schumer said last week, this is a referendum on the Republicans. They all talk about the Republicans as being incompetent. That's a big mistake for two reasons. What that says is that you're going to be quiet and let the other guys fail. That's wrong because what that does is allow the Republicans to frame all the issues between now and the election. If you're silent and you just say, "you're going to fail," you're letting the other guys control the debate, and you can't do that. Moreover, if you say that they're incompetent, what is the incompetence frame? It says, "you've got the right idea, you're just not carrying it out right." So what does Bush do? He appoints more competent people. "Well now we have a more competent person who is Secretary of the Treasury, and now we have a more competent head of the CIA, and now we have a more competent this and more competent that." It doesn't change the ideology. It's the ideology that is screwing up the country. And that ideology is being used by every Congressman and every candidate for office among the conservatives. That ideology has to be fought. (Emphasis supplied.)

Lakoff is wrong is almost every way here. First, his rejection of the upcoming election as being a referendum on Republican governance is simply not consistent with reality. Elections are first and foremost a moment of accountability for the government. By definition this election will be referendum on the current Republican government. Kerry's major campaign failure in 2004 was his inability to make the 2004 election a referendum on Bush. Rove successfully made Kerry one of the major issues while Bush himself was only an issue in contrast to Kerry. Lakoff further misunderstands that a referendum on the Republican government does not mean silence. It means the exact opposite. It means Democratic critique of the Republican performance.

Lakoff's praise of Obama further demonstrates what he is missing:

Now the Barak Obama question comes up. How do you fight it? What do you say? What Obama does is this: he says there are traditional American values, unity being among them, and he appeals to those values. We share a lot of those values and you hear in his speeches that there are plenty of them. Among those values have to do, as he points out, with religion--there are a lot of religious people in the country. They are not mostly conservatives, and that's the thing he understands. He knows that most people who are religious Christians are, in fact, progressive Christians, and he wants to appeal to them. He wants to be able to talk to them as well as to people who don't happen to be Christians and don't happen to have other religions, but are also moral beings. And when he talks about religion what he immediately gets to is morality. The morality he gets to is progressive morality. Why? Because he talks about the empathy deficit. Empathy is at the heart of progressive morality--that's what progressive morality is about. Immediately, he is able to talk to a huge audience about central progressive themes without using a word like progressive, without mentioning the ideology, but mentioning what is behind the ideology: caring and empathy. That is also what is behind the values that were there at the founding of this country.

Lakoff praises Obama for injecting the "values" issue into an election that has been and should be fought completely on favorable ground for Democrats is frankly, mindboggling. Iraq. The Economy. Health Care, etc. Reublican failure at governance. Obama discusses a Republican strength. This is Lakoff's idea of good politics? Of course Obama's approach has other failings that I discussed in my previous post, but Lakoff's embrace of a phony GOP issue for this election cycle demonstrates the limits of Lakoff's political savvy. With due respect to the Professor, one could not imagine worse advice at this time.

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  • Display: Sort:
    Re: What Lakoff and Obama Do Not Understand (none / 0) (#1)
    by aw on Wed Jul 19, 2006 at 06:34:12 PM EST
    Once upon a time, Jack Kenneday caught the magic that was possible; of course labor was in the ascendent then. A man could support his family. A country could afford to dream. Now, we have the dessicated Lakoff.

    Re: What Lakoff and Obama Do Not Understand (none / 0) (#2)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Thu Jul 20, 2006 at 02:59:54 AM EST
    Nice follow-on post. Read the first one as well and could not disagree more. What is of great concern to me is the fact that your view seems to be the prevailing one in the progressive blogosphere.
    The overall national break was 21% Liberal, 45% Moderate and 34% Conservative. Does it not make more sense for Democrats to consider how the policy views, branding and identity of the Republicans as well as of the Democrats can be changed in order to attract this large swath of moderate voters?
    And how are the Democrats supposed to attract these moderates, pray tell? Like it or not, Liberals (and by extension liberal views) are in the minority, and the only way to get that large swath is by moving to the middle. Oh..ofcourse.."Politics is not about moving to the middle, it's about defining the middle." I'm very sorry, but I have to call bull on that. Why can't politics be about inspiring people? To get them to buy into your own way of thinking. To tell them that we have more in common than the other side wants you to think? Why does it have to be this Hofstadter-esq, our way or the high way thing? Is that the progressive way? Is that the compassionate way? Hell, is that the "right" way to go about things? Are 34% of Americans just bad people or people who have legitimate concerns that need to be addressed? And I have a sneaky feeling that this whole post is not about Obama reaching out, but to the people he wants to reach out to. Most Americans say they are Christians and believe in God. What is wrong in that? How do you go from separation between Church and State to arousing suspicion from Christians (most of whom believe in the separation)? I don't share the optimism of re-claiming one of the houses in November, and I have a feeling that until a lot of people smack down views such as these, we will all become inured to the way we felt on the 5th of November 2005.

    Re: What Lakoff and Obama Do Not Understand (none / 0) (#3)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Thu Jul 20, 2006 at 03:09:26 AM EST
    Sorry, meant November 2004. Oh well I felt just as bad - even worse - a year after anyway!

    Re: What Lakoff and Obama Do Not Understand (none / 0) (#4)
    by Dadler on Thu Jul 20, 2006 at 09:19:58 AM EST
    LondonMan, There is NO liberal ANYthing in this country in power. What passes for liberal here doesn't come close. So complaining about the lefts is silly, it doesn't exist, nor could the majority of Americans give you any working definition of the words liberal or conservative. The problem is a lack of thought on the part of the PEOPLE, who do, after all, hold the ultimate power strings here. Stroking uninformed paradigms is not the mark of any effective political campaign. Imagination is. And we have none.

    Re: What Lakoff and Obama Do Not Understand (none / 0) (#5)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Thu Jul 20, 2006 at 10:15:26 AM EST
    FYI Obama doesn't necessarily return the love for Lakoff... not so sure about this "prize pupil" thang: via Street Prophets interview
    This idea that somehow - that any time that Democrats or progressives engage in self-reflection we are adopting a Republican frame - the popularity of this George Lakoff critique of everything we do, I think hampers us from being able to improve our game. You know, I love Lakoff. I think he's an insightful guy. But the fact is that I am not a propagandist. That's not my job. My job and my intent in delivering a speech like this is I'm trying to speak truthfully as I can about what I see out there. If I'm restricted or prescribed in my statements because the media or Republicans - or Democrats - are going to interpret what I say through the Republican frame, I'm not going to spend a lot of time saying very much.
    I will read more about your Obama speech comments.

    Re: What Lakoff and Obama Do Not Understand (none / 0) (#6)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Thu Jul 20, 2006 at 12:16:22 PM EST
    Like it or not, Liberals (and by extension liberal views) are in the minority, and the only way to get that large swath is by moving to the middle.
    London_Man, your analysis seems to be based on right-wing DLC style myths rather than reality. The reality is that Republicans have been moving to the right for decades while Democrats have responded by continuously trying to move to an ever-rightward-moving "middle" ((this "middle" conventionally being defined as half way between Democrats and Republicans.) The result: Republicans control everything. The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result. Your faulty conclusion is not surprising though, as it is built on a faulty premise:
    Like it or not, Liberals (and by extension liberal views) are in the minority
    People self-identify as liberal in low numbers because the right has successfully demonized the term through relentless repetition of "liberal" as a derogatory slur. It does not follow logically "by extension" that "liberal views are in the minority." In fact polls show that on issue after issue the liberal position is either a majority or plurality.

    Re: What Lakoff and Obama Do Not Understand (none / 0) (#7)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Thu Jul 20, 2006 at 03:42:21 PM EST
    This Is SO Wrong Lakoff is weak on the retail-level stuff, it's not his main strength. But this post doesn't even touch on that. Instead, it's full of misunderstanding about what Lakoff is saying--so much misunderstanding it would require a post of equal length, at least to sort it all out. Here' just a hint, however: in talking about reaching out to self-identified conservatives, Lakoff isn't saying to ignore moderates. As he explains elsewhere repeatedly, almost everyone has both liberal and conservative frameworks in their heads. They can understand them both. So if you can speak to people in a certain way that activates the liberal frame, that pre-empts or coopts the conservative pitch, which would use and strengthen the conservative frame. You've both gone on the offensive and pre-empted their habitual line of attack. Thus, he is talking in terms of liberal and conservative because American political discourse doesn't have a separate moderate framework. Moderates tend to borrow from both. This is not the same as saying "go after conservatives first." It is saying, combat and coopt the conservative frames, and that's how you win the moderates over, not by going after them issue-by-issue. Now, of course Lakoff knows there are some folks who vote staunchly by the issues, and some single-issue voters who can't be swayed by anything else. But, aside from GOTV, those aren't the voters that folks are debating about in this context. One last point: the split between liberals and conservatives on who they vote for nationally is huge. The split between liberals and conservatives on individual issues is not. Check the General Social Survey for the past 30+ years on any quesiton you like. Most show a difference of 10-25%. There is much more consensus than people realize, and a major part of the rightwing success of the past 25 years results from undermining and attacking that consensus. Lakoff is 100% correct to say that victory will come from reclaiming, rebuilding and reanimating that consensus.

    Re: What Lakoff and Obama Do Not Understand (none / 0) (#8)
    by Deconstructionist on Thu Jul 20, 2006 at 05:16:41 PM EST
    i'd say one thing Obama and every other realist understands is that the 1st black President will not be a radical and that for a black to have any chance he has to be a centrist. Is that selling out or being rational?

    Re: What Lakoff and Obama Do Not Understand (none / 0) (#9)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Jul 21, 2006 at 08:35:44 AM EST
    Thanks for the link, Buffalo Girl. Followed it to the "talk2action" site and read an article there taking issue with Obama supposedly dissing the Democrats about religion. Whilst it's true that there aren't any prominent secular fundamentalist Democrats, what is evident is that in their zeal to beat back encroachments on the Church and State issue, many on the left (and I include our hostess here), have shown disdain or at the very least, insensitivity to the Christian faith. This is what the fundies are exploiting. Many a time I have left TL feeling a bit uncomfortable at the tone whenever these issues are discussed; and I'm not even a regular church goer.

    Re: What Lakoff and Obama Do Not Understand (none / 0) (#10)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Jul 21, 2006 at 06:32:25 PM EST
    London_Man I agree with you analysis. I know nothing about Lakoff, what he said, or what people say that he said or meant, but I did read some of Obama's speech and I do read what Jim Wallis says, and usually agree with his views. There are plenty of moderate Christians who are not automatically Republican voters, and do not agree with the extreme RW fundamentalists. The Democrats have every reason to want to attract these people, and they also endorse social views and policies that should attract them. But acting as if all Christians are RW extremists will do exactly the opposite -- it will alienate them, and keep them voting Republican, or abstaining altogether. Rove is already doing everything he can to help that process along. Why would the Democats want to help him with that project?