Democrats still need message help

Gemeritus professor of cognitive science and linguistics at UC Berkeley, isn’t overly impressed by the Democrats’ midterm wins. His 2004 book, “Don’t Think of an Elephant!,” about how conservatives frame their political messages more effectively than Democrats do, moved the needle for liberals on campaign language, but not nearly enough, he says. To win in 2020, the Democrats have to keep their messengers on message, and abandon a recitation of facts, exchanging it for a persuasive story about democracy and governance that voters want to hear, and support.

We are a storytelling species. What’s the story the Democrats need to tell now?

The story has two parts, and they have to do with progressive values. One of them comes from Abraham Lincoln, that in a democracy, you have a government that is of, by and for the people.

“Of ” means the ordinary folks are in charge, “by” means the people who are governing you have the same life experiences you have and understand that, and “for” means that the role of government is to take care of people.

The second thing is that the private depends on public resources. You can’t have a business without public resources like roads and bridges and airports and the electric grids. But private life is like that too. You need the same roads and bridges and airports and electric grid. If you ask a Democrat if that’s true, they’ll all say yes, and they’ll give examples. But if you ask them, have you ever said it? The answer is no. And that’s the point. They haven’t said it.

Every Democrat should deliver the same messages and repeat them over and over and over. Not only that, they should point out how [their] policy relates to these values…. Hillary Clinton never said what her values were. It was amazing. She just gave policy after policy but never said what she stood for.

Framing is a concept you brought to the table — the way you tell the story. Democrats don’t seem to be as good at it as Republicans.

Exactly. Democrats don’t know how people think. It’s really sad. The problem is what I call “enlightenment reason,” [which] says everybody reasons the same way; that’s what makes them human. Enlightenment reason says all you need to do is get the facts, and everybody will reason to the right conclusion, since everybody has the same reason. No. If they have different worldviews, they’ll reason to different conclusions.

The Democrats don’t understand this. They think that if you just tell people the facts, they will all reason to the right conclusion. That’s why they keep coming up with fact after fact after fact, rather than framing things in a way so that people will understand why these things are important.

Did the Democrats do a better job of framing and getting their point across in the midterms?

The reaction to Trump had everything to do with the midterm results. But also [Democrats] did a couple of things that were very, very smart. One of them was running on preexisting conditions, saying, Hey, do you have a preexisting condition? Does anybody in your family? Well, the answer is, everybody has one. And what they did was tie that to healthcare. That was a smart thing to do. They said, Look, government is there to make sure

that you’re not suffering.

Is the Trump narrative, the Trump message, wearing thin?

There’s an issue of Trump’s lies and misleading statements. And the question really is, how should the media deal with these? My proposal is that they deal with them with what I call truth sandwiches.

A truth sandwich begins with the relevant truths about a given issue. It then says, here’s what Trump says or has done on this issue that violates those truths. Then it comes back and says the truth again, and it finishes up by saying why the difference between the truth and the lie is important.

That’s a truth sandwich. Now, if the media constantly did this … that changes things.

And I suppose they want to avoid the circus-like circumstances that we saw with the Republican presidential primaries in 2016 and pull off something with a little more dignity.

I think there’s dignity and there’s effectiveness, and they’re not in conflict with each other. But the effectiveness part cannot be ignored. They have to make sure … the candidates are not just A versus B, and all talking about how they differ from each other, but [about] why they’re all Democrats. The Bernie versus Hillary style is not a good style.

Do you find yourself yelling at the TV during the campaign?

Yes, all the time.

Yelling advice, I presume?

Yelling advice, or cursing. But it’s difficult to watch.

This is an edited excerpt of the full interview, available at soundcloud.com/pattmorrisonasks.