Don't Think of an Elephant!

Language matters. morass: a complicated or confused situation She would become lost in a morass of lies and explanations. Communicating about values.Determining our values and reframing the political debate. Viral marketingRight-wing fundamentalist. Frames are mental structures that shape the way we see the world.Reframing is social change. "Cognitive unconscious"Thinking differently requires speaking differently. We must learn to articulate those values loud and clear.

They needed, therefore, to identify conservative ideas as populist and liberal/progressive ideas as elitist - even though the reverse was true. They faced a massive framing problem, a problem that required a change in everyday language and thought.

Through language they have branded liberals as effete elitist, unpatriotic spendthrifts - limousine liberals, East Coast liberals, the liberal elite, wishy-washy liberals, and so on. At the same time they have branded conservatives as populists - again through language, including body language. From Ronald Reagan's down-home folksiness to George W. Bush's John Wayne-style "Bubbaisms," the language, dialects, body language, and narrative forma have been those of rural populists.

Without the cultural civil war, the conservatives cannot win.

But to stay in power the conservatives need the support of many of the poor. That is, they need a significant percentage of the poor and middle class to vote against their economic interests. This has been achieved through the recognition that many working people and evangelical Protestants have a strict father morality in their families and/or religious lives. Conservatives intellectuals have realized that these are the same values that drive political conservatism. They have also realized that people vote their values and their identities more than their economic self-interests. What they have done is to create, via framing and language, a link between strict father morality in the family and religion on the one hand and conservative politics on the other. This conceptual link must be so emotionally strong that it can overcome economic self-interest.

In addition, Davis made the bad mistake of accepting the Democratic Leadership Council's metaphor of campaigning as marketing. In the DLC model, you look for a list of particular issues that a majority of people, including those on the left, support. In the last congressional election it was prescription drugs, social security, and a women's right to choose. If necessary, you "move to the right" - adopt some right-wing values in hope of getting "centrist" voters. Davis, for example, favored the death penalty and tough sentencing, and supported the prison guards' union. It's a self-defeating strategy. Conservatives have been winning elections without moving to the left. By presenting a laundry list of issues, Davis and other Democrats fail to present a moral vision - a coherent identity with a powerful cultural stereotype - that defines the very identity of the voters they are trying to reach. A list of issues is not a moral vision.