Between 2000 and 2006, a specter haunted the community of fundamentalist Democrats. Members of this community looked around and observed their moral and intellectual superiority. They observed that their policies were better for the middle classes. And yet the middle classes did not support Democrats. They tended to vote, in large numbers, for the morally and intellectually inferior party, the one, moreover, that catered to the interests of the rich.
How could this be?
Serious thinkers set to work, and produced a long shelf of books answering this question. Their answers tended to rely on similar themes. First, Democrats lose because they are too intelligent. Their arguments are too complicated for American voters. Second, Democrats lose because they are too tolerant. They refuse to cater to racism and hatred. Finally, Democrats lose because they are not good at the dark art of politics. Republicans, though they are knuckle-dragging simpletons when it comes to policy, are devilishly clever when it comes to electioneering. They have brilliant political consultants like Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, who frame issues so fiendishly, they can fool the American people into voting against their own best interests.
This literature was never taken seriously by sophisticated Democrats, but it thrived nonetheless. Still, you’d think it would be pretty much extinct now that Democrats are winning and Republicans are in the midst of a historic meltdown.
But I worked for two Democratic National Presidential Campaigns on the National Staff level. The Democrats have an emotional instability gene built into their political template, and a credulous belief that their own good intentions trump common sense. So now they're going for the jugular, believing that the American people can be conned into thinking Far Left is the middle----as the KKKossacks propound---or that Hollyweird is full of thoughtful social commentators like Harry Shearer and Alec Baldwin, as the Puffington Host keeps intimating. Brooks slaps this Westen fellow silly:
This thesis raises some interesting questions. First, why did someone with so little faith in rational inquiry go into academia, and what does he do to those who disagree with him at Emory faculty meetings, especially recovering alcoholics?
Second, the states of upper New England and the Pacific Coast regularly used to vote Republican in presidential elections but now they generally vote Democratic. Did people in those states become less emotional, and therefore more amenable to the Democrats’ rational appeals over the past few decades? If so, has this led to a drop in Valentine’s Day purchases, at least compared with people in passionate states like Nebraska?
Third, how did John Kerry beat Howard Dean in the Democratic primaries? Was it because of his Oprah-esque displays of emotional intensity?
Fourth, is it possible that substance has something to do with the political fortunes of parties? Could it be that Democrats won in the middle part of the 20th century because they were right about the big issues — the New Deal and the civil rights movement? Is it possible Republicans won in the latter part of the century because they were right about economic growth and the cold war? Is it possible Democrats are winning now because they were right about whether to go to war in Iraq? And if substantive policies correlate with political fortunes, what does that say about the human mind?
Finally, if voter decisions are driven by the sort of crude emotional outbursts Westen recommends, and if, as he writes, “a substantial minority of Americans hold authoritarian, intolerant ideologies driven by fear, hate and prejudice that are fundamentally incompatible with Democratic (and democratic) principles,” then shouldn’t we abandon this whole democracy thing? Shouldn’t we have a coup, led perhaps by the Emory psychology department, which could prevent the brutish and hate-filled from ever gaining control?
It’s rare that one comes across a book that raises so many questions. Of course it’s rare that one comes across a book that so avidly flatters the prejudices of its partisan readers.
The dim bulbs of the fever swamp think their meth-fueled delirium tremens will carry the day, because they translate their grandiosity and hysteria into superiority on a moral and intellectual level. This is called mass psychosis by most social observers with a modicum of objectivity. McGovern & Co. believed a "student body left" Hail Mary pass would gain the White House, as the student movements totally misread their influence on the American body politic. Brooks ends with a soothing lullaby to the squalling kiddie-korps running Kossack/firedog/HuffinPuff:
emotions are produced by learning. As we go through life, we learn what cause leads to what effect. When, later on, we face similar situations, the emotions highlight possible outcomes, drawing us toward some actions and steering us away from others.
In other words, emotions partner with rationality. It’s not necessary to dumb things down to appeal to emotions. It’s not necessary to understand some secret language that will key certain neuro-emotional firings. The best way to win votes — and this will be a shocker — is to offer people an accurate view of the world and a set of policies that seem likely to produce good results.
This is how you make voters happy.
Don't count on the far-left to get any messages from people who disagree with their apodictic manifestoes. Like firedoglake, they don't take outside calls.