home

What Lakoff's Defenders Do Not Understand

By Jeralyn, Section Other Politics
Posted on Fri Jul 21, 2006 at 04:14:31 PM EST
Tags: (all tags)
Share This: Digg! StumbleUpon del.icio.us reddit reddit

(Guest post by Big Tent Democrat)

Update: The person who interviewed Lakoff understands my point. I agree with his post.

My post of a few days ago on George Lakoff's comments on the 2006 election has set off a number of Lakoff supporters, who have argued that I have misread Lakoff. Curiously, Lakoff's defenders do not cite to the text of what Lakoff actually said, instead explaining to me what they believe Lakoff meant. I suppose it is possible that Lakoff did not say what he meant, and if that is the case, then perhaps Lakoff is not as inept on political advice as he appears from those comments. But I am a mere mortal and can only glean Lakoff's meaning from his actual words. Most importantly, Lakoff's defenders have no acceptable answer for my principal critique; Lakoff's rejection of the power of negatively branding the Republicans, for its own purposes and to assist in the definition of Democrats.

Let me address some of the points of contention. Lakoff wrote (I break Lakoff's statements into smaller pieces because Lakoff's defenders stated that my quotations were too long) :

[T]here's a terrible Democratic strategy being put forth which is to say, as Chuck Schumer said last week, this is a referendum on the Republicans. They all talk about the Republicans as being incompetent. That's a big mistake for two reasons. What that says is that you're going to be quiet and let the other guys fail.

So what does Lakoff mean when he says it is a terrible strategy to say the election is a referendum on Republicans? Hmmm. To me he is saying it is a terrible strategy that Dems state the election is a referendum on Republicans. Is some other reading possible? Lakoff's defenders say so. I don't see it myself.

Lakoff further states:

That's wrong because what that does is allow the Republicans to frame all the issues between now and the election. If you're silent and you just say, "you're going to fail," you're letting the other guys control the debate, and you can't do that.

I wrote that "Lakoff further misunderstands that a referendum on the Republican government does not mean silence. It means the exact opposite. It means Democratic critique of the Republican performance." I think Lakoff is wrong and I stand by my critique.

Lakoff's supporters say that what Lakoff MEANT was that of course it is a referendum and of course it does not mean silence to say it is a referendum. Well, he may have meant that but he said the exact opposite. Sorry, but I am a mere mortal; I have no mind reading powers.

Lakoff's supporters tell me that what Lakoff MEANT was Dems must offer an alternative. Indeed, Lakoff's supporters say everybody says that. Yes everyone does say that. "Everyone" says a lot of things. Does that make it right? The evidence to support the correctness of that view is lacking.

In any event, if Lakoff is sayng what everyone is saying, what is the big whoop? Is there something specific Lakoff has in mind? Is he saying that he thinks Democrats will not define themselves? That he thinks they will define themselves in poor ways? Well, he did not write that. Lakoff's supporters say that Dems will allow the GOP to define them.

This critique of me is perhaps the most ironic of all. In fact it is my principal criticism of Lakoff that he seems unable to understand the power of defining the Republicans. Lakoff criticized Democrats for spending a great deal of time defining the Republican brand. In so fiercely defending Lakoff, his defenders have missed my principal critique and never address it. How ironic.

Lakoff's inability to see this was exemplified in his praise of Obama. In my original post I wrote:

Lakoff praises Obama for injecting the "values" issue into an election that has been and should be fought completely on favorable ground for Democrats is frankly, mindboggling. Iraq. The Economy. Health Care, etc. Republican failure at governance. Obama discusses a Republican strength. This is Lakoff's idea of good politics? Of course Obama's approach has other failings that I discussed in my previous post, but Lakoff's embrace of a phony GOP issue for this election cycle demonstrates the limits of Lakoff's political savvy. With due respect to the Professor, one could not imagine worse advice at this time.

Lakoff's focus on self identified conservatives is where his flaw is manifested in practical terms. One of his his defenders says that:

[BTD] misunderstands why Lakoff talks about talking to conservatives. Lakoff does so primarily because his theory explains two coherent political frameworks, liberal and conservative. There is no coherent moderate framework. However, moderates employ both liberal and conservative frameworks. Thus, speaking to and countering conservative influences is a way to reach both conservatives and moderates. Big Tent Democrat mistakenly thinks that Lakoff is ignoring moderates in favor of conservatives.

This is so much hokum. Conservatives are not convinced by "coherent political frameworks." While Lakoff's statements are rather contradictory on the issue, Lakoff's defenders deride Hofstadter's focus on the psychological and irrational as explaining voter behavior. Lakoff's defenders speak of coherence in the conservative political mind as if they are rational actors. It is my contention they are not. They are paranoid actors, reacting politically to satisfy their personal fears and status ambitions.

Lakoff's defender inaccurately argue that speaking to persuade and address conservative voters help with moderate voters. No eivdence supports this and indeed I velieve, as I have statd that Lakoff is fundamentally wrong on this point. The conservative tendencies of moderates are fueled by the same irrationality that fuels conservatives themselves. Moderates are persuadable and accessible for Democrats in spite of these conservative tendencies because they are susceptible to a liberal critique of conservatism. Consider how moderates react to the radical religious right. Would it not be much more fruitful to brand Republicans with the beliefs of the extreme right in order to convince moderates that the views of Democrats better represent them? Does it not seem more plausible that a moderate may have status anxiety against being seen as a antiscience yahoo?
I understand why Lakoff and his defenders find my critique unappealing -- it speaks to the power of negative branding of your political opponents. It is certainly true that politics would be a more pleasant and enlightening experience if rational and reasonable explanations were what drove voting behavior.

It is my cynical view that this is certainly not true for conservative voters and mostly not true for all voters. Lakoff's defenders deride Richard Hofstadter on this point. Ok. Well how about FDR? He knew a little something about winning elections. His negative branding of the Republican Party was so effective that Democrats became the majority party for a generation. On politics, I'll take FDR over Lakoff every day of the week and twice on Sundays (joke intended.)

< Jose Padilla's Lawyers Stuck in Beirut | Late Nite Music: Lives in the Balance >

  • The Online Magazine with Liberal coverage of crime-related political and injustice news

  • Contribute To TalkLeft


    • Display: Sort:
    What Lakoff's Defenders Do Not Understand | 8 comments (8 topical)
    Re: What Lakoff's Defenders Do Not Understand (none / 0) (#1)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Jul 21, 2006 at 05:02:38 PM EST
    I wonder why this discussion is being made here ... it is not really germane to the website, though it is interesting overall.

    Re: What Lakoff's Defenders Do Not Understand (none / 0) (#2)
    by rdandrea on Fri Jul 21, 2006 at 06:29:17 PM EST
    I am sort of wondering what magical set of qualifications allows Joe to define what is germane to the web site. I have read some of Lakoff's work, and my own personal feeling is that what makes good books can also make lousy politics. That's neither here nor there, however. As a guy who runs my own website, what's germane is what I say is germane. Your mileage may vary.

    Re: What Lakoff's Defenders Do Not Understand (none / 0) (#3)
    by cmpnwtr on Fri Jul 21, 2006 at 07:56:22 PM EST
    In the 1960s when I was busy getting a major in political science in a university department of poly sci that called itsef "behaviorist," one of the stunning assertions I first learned, backed by empirical research, was that voters are irrational, and make their choices largely from unconscious responses to the communications they receive and the perceptions they arrive at. 40 years later this is even more true as we have moved to the politics of emotional manipulation through the visual media. Lakoff has it right when he speaks of the power of "framing" as this is how perceptions are shaped in our unconscious life. It is why we have the phenomenon of low and middle income people continually voting against their own self interest because they buy into the mythic framing that they are fed by the corporate Republican media, so skilled in the powers of persuasion and marketing. However, much of their framing is how they define the political adversary outside that same mythic framework of belonging and meaning. So Geralyn has it right on this, but we need to listen to Lakoff and his propositions about communicating with the largely unconscious and irrational electorate.

    Re: What Lakoff's Defenders Do Not Understand (none / 0) (#4)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Jul 21, 2006 at 08:01:17 PM EST
    There's no question about it. You can't talk to conservatives on rational terms. They are not rational actors. Agreed. The best you can do is to avoid talking to them on any terms rational or not that simply feed their irrational motives and behaviors. So Lakoff would better serve us by explaining how not to talk to conservatives. Unfortunatekly, he hasn't quite gotten there in his own studies. We will whave to wait for his next book.

    Re: What Lakoff's Defenders Do Not Understand (none / 0) (#5)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Jul 21, 2006 at 08:17:21 PM EST
    I have no interest in finding out about Lakoff, everything he has said, or what people say about him and what he has said. But in the previous post, Big Tent Dem's criticism of Lakoff loses me completely by citing this passage, in which Lakoff is writing about Obama, as a key example of Lakoff's supposed misunderstandings:
    Now the Barak Obama question comes up. How do you fight it? What do you say? What Obama does is this: he says there are traditional American values, unity being among them, and he appeals to those values. We share a lot of those values and you hear in his speeches that there are plenty of them. Among those values have to do, as he points out, with religion--there are a lot of religious people in the country. They are not mostly conservatives, and that's the thing he understands. He knows that most people who are religious Christians are, in fact, progressive Christians, and he wants to appeal to them. He wants to be able to talk to them as well as to people who don't happen to be Christians and don't happen to have other religions, but are also moral beings. And when he talks about religion what he immediately gets to is morality. The morality he gets to is progressive morality. Why? Because he talks about the empathy deficit. Empathy is at the heart of progressive morality--that's what progressive morality is about. Immediately, he is able to talk to a huge audience about central progressive themes without using a word like progressive, without mentioning the ideology, but mentioning what is behind the ideology: caring and empathy. That is also what is behind the values that were there at the founding of this country.
    IMHO, this is dead on. It describes what Obama is getting right, not where he is going wrong. Yet Big Tent Dem writes:
    Lakoff praises Obama for injecting the "values" issue into an election that has been and should be fought completely on favorable ground for Democrats is frankly, mindboggling.
    I could not disagree more. "Values" is not an "issue" that you can chose to inject into the debate, or ignore. In the eyes of many voters, it is only by publicly embracing the values that they care about, and naming them explicitly, that democratic candidates can earn the right to criticize the abysmal performance of the current administration. If they do not do that, they will be dismissed as just another politician, attacking their opponent when they are no better themselves. Big Tent Dem wants the election to focus on issues like:
    Iraq. The Economy. Health Care, etc. Reublican failure at governance.
    But the Bush admin's failures in those areas are all just examples of the way in which the administration's record demonstrates that their claim to hold those same core values as the electorate is provably false. But democratic candidates can't exploit this fact unless they can first claim the moral high ground. And if they cannot do that, for whatever reason, then the Dem's will have chosen poor candidates, and the electorate's criticisms will be valid. I just posted about this in the earlier thread, so I won't repeat all of that post. But the key point is that:
    There are plenty of moderate Christians who are not automatically Republican voters, and do not agree with the extreme RW fundamentalists. The Democrats have every reason to want to attract these people, and they also endorse social views and policies that should attract them. But acting as if all Christians are RW extremists will do exactly the opposite -- it will alienate them, and keep them voting Republican, or abstaining altogether.
    Re: What Lakoff's Defenders Do Not Understand (none / 0) (#6)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Jul 21, 2006 at 11:31:11 PM EST
    Like Congress, what is "germane" is what a blog says is germane. All the same, one reads "The Online Magazine with Liberal coverage of crime-related political and injustice news" and one doesn't expect extended analysis on political framing. OTOH, snarky comments is quite expected.

    Re: What Lakoff's Defenders Do Not Understand (none / 0) (#7)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Jul 21, 2006 at 11:32:13 PM EST
    Joe, TalkLeft covers elections, issues and candidates (see the about page.) How the Democrats can win elections and get out the vote is a subject TalkLeft covers. If there's a post you're not intrigued by on TalkLeft, please just scroll on to one that does interest you.

    Re: What Lakoff's Defenders Do Not Understand (none / 0) (#8)
    by aw on Sat Jul 22, 2006 at 02:08:15 PM EST
    Lakoff should try his theories out by running a single campaign, say a congressional race. See if a nice, positively framed campaign works against a nasty one.

    What Lakoff's Defenders Do Not Understand | 8 comments (8 topical)