I'm genuinely not a big fan of advice books for Democrats. Most of them strike me as very little beyond a complicated rationale for why the author's personal position is the only ideology that could construct a crushing majority in this country. Convenient, particularly since I often agree with the author's ideology, but not necessarily enlightening. Drew Westen, a political psychologist with a focus on neuropsychiatric research, brings a bit more value to the process. And so I highly recommend that folks read his book excerpt focusing on how voters experience politics, and how Democrats all too often speak on another plane entirely.
"The vision of mind," writes Westen, "that has captured the imagination of Democratic strategists for much of the last 40 years -- a dispassionate mind that makes decisions by weighing the evidence and reasoning to the most valid conclusions -- bears no relation to how the mind and brain actually work...Our brains are nothing but vast networks of neurons. Of particular importance for understanding politics are "networks of associations" -- bundles of thoughts, feelings, sounds, images, memories, and emotions that have become linked through experience. People can't tell you much about what's in those networks, or about what's likely to change them (which happen to be the central determinants of voting behavior). They can't tell you because they don't have conscious access to them, any more than they can tell you what's going on in their pancreas. And if you ask them, they often get it wrong."
It's this mistake that leads to the polling literalism of so many Democratic campaigns: The yes I'm for prescription drug reimportation, no I'm not for Social Security privatization, type of messaging. But voters often don't know what they do and don't like. Their brain doesn't react to political rhetoric with either a happy or sad face. "In polls and focus groups, voters told John Kerry's consultants that they didn't like "negativity," so the consultants told Kerry to avoid it. To what extent those voters just didn't know the power of negative appeals on their own networks, or didn't want to admit it, is unclear."
Westen goes on to use examine the electorate's contradictory associations on guns. Towards the end, he veers a bit too deep into framing waters for my tastes, but even so: The explanation of the political brain is fascinating stuff, and one all us armchair strategist, and all actual strategists, should read.
