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.