Democratic messaging guru George Lakoff
Last Tuesday, Democracy For America held a conference call featuring Democratic messaging guru George Lakoff and Nina Turner, current State Senator and Democratic candidate for Secretary of State from Ohio. The subject of the call was how to frame the Democratic Party message for the 2014 and 2016 elections.
It’s no secret that the Democrats need help communicating their ideas, positions and values to the public. The Republicans almost always do a better job of messaging, which results in their minority positions on many issues receiving outsized importance and impact. Democrats often have better, more popular ideas (such as universal gun background checks) and should be doing much better with American voters. That’s why the Messaging Matters blog was founded in the first place. Lakoff, who is a professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, has been trying to help. Lakoff recently released a new edition of his groundbreaking book on political framing, “Don’t Think of an Elephant!” On the conference call, Lakoff explained the difference between conservatives and progressives in the way they frame issues, and made some suggestions as to how to frame the current debate.
According to Lakoff, progressives and Democrats believe that “we are all in this together.” Thus, they advocate using government and public resources to help everyone in society. This means investing in public education, roads, electric grids, sewers and other public goods. Lakoff said that progressives likewise believe in the need for safe food (via the Food and Drug Administration), disease prevention (the Centers for Disease Control) healthcare (the Affordable Care Act), home and workplace safety (OSHA), product safety (CPSC), etc. Progressives believe that these protections should be provided to everyone through the government, and, importantly, that such protections give us FREEDOM, i.e., the freedom to be safe, healthy, to pursue good jobs, etc. Lakoff’s term for this progressive frame or model is the “nurturing parent,” who wants to protect his or her children, teach them to take care of themselves and others, and give them honesty and explanations for their actions in order to help them succeed.
According to Lakoff, Conservatives have a very different frame through which they view the world. Lakoff said that conservatives and Republicans believe that democracy equals liberty which equals freedom from government. Conservatives thus believe that taking public assets makes people weaker. That’s why much Republican rhetoric includes phrases like “taking personal responsibility.” Republicans, according to Lakoff, believe that government should not help people, and even that people should not help others, unless they have a personal relationship such as a family member or friend. Conservatives, said Lakoff, “want to get rid of public resources” and to privatize them. This includes everything from natural resources like oil and minerals, to education and healthcare. Thus, according to Lakoff, the conservative family model is that of the “strict father,” an authoritarian figure who must discipline his children harshly, sometimes even through physical pain, must keep order, and who teaches his children that, if they don’t become prosperous, they are irresponsible and even immoral.
As for the 2014 elections, Lakoff said that Democrats must appeal to voters’ values, morality and desire for freedom. According to Lakoff, in the 2010 mid-term elections, Republicans — especially via their Tea Party astroturf creation — successfully made this appeal to conservative voters by saying, untruthfully, that the Affordable Care Act would be a “government takeover of healthcare” and thus an attack on their freedom. Lakoff said that the Obama administration did a poor job of communicating the benefits of the ACA, which led to losses in the 2010 elections that Democrats cannot afford to repeat this year. In the upcoming elections, Lakoff said that progressives should urge that access to the voting booth, such as early voting and weekend and late voting hours, is a form of freedom that should not be taken away by lawmakers.
Ohio State Senator Nina Turner echoed many of Lakoff’s views. Turner also added that she is “unashamedly progressive,” and that Democrats cannot stay home on Election Day 2014 and expect simply to “leap over” the 2014 elections only to think about 2016. On the related issue of fighting for voting rights versus the Republicans’ voter suppression efforts, Turner said that the right to vote is the greatest, most patriotic American characteristic. Turner also said that progressives and Democrats should “connect the bread box to the ballot box” by identifying issues that are important to individual voters (e.g., women’s control over their bodies, the ability to get a good job, etc.), then tell them that if they care about that issue, they need to vote to protect their rights. Turner advised progressives to appeal to conservatives’ hearts, not their heads, and find out what we have in common with them to build on that relationship.
Photo by Jere Keys, used under Creative Commons license. http://is.gd/x2hARp
[…] months ago, we heard from Democratic framing and messaging guru George Lakoff, who reminded us about his “Strict Father” model for conservatives. This Strict Father mindset, […]