Voting based on identity, values, not issues -

Brief Description:
Kerry understood a lot about issues, and when he would talk, it was all about how his plans were superior, and he knew how to do things better. Meanwhile, what George Bush was saying about him was that he was weak and effeminate, and a Northeastern elitist, and he didn't want to protect us from terrorists, and he didn't believe in God with the same fervency that Bush did.

Those arguments are all about identity, not about issues. People agreed with John Kerry on the issues. One of the things that's a strange handicap for Democrats is that the country is actually quite progressive, if you go down a list of issues. Almost everything that's on the progressive agenda, the public wants. They want a national health care plan. They wanted an increase in minimum wage for the entire ten years that it took. They want strong environmental protections. They want a less bellicose foreign policy. The entire progressive agenda are things that the majority of the public wants.

So what happens in an election when the Democrats see that? They say, we'll, go out and talk about the issues. They talk about the issues, and the Republican talks about identity. The Republican talks about why that Democrat is not like you. He's not one of us. We hear that over and over and over again. He doesn't have the right values. And then the Republican wins the Democrat says I can't believe it. We had the advantage on the issues. How did such a thing happen?

Paul Waldman: Absolutely. Westen talks about this a lot, and this is something I talked about in my book, Being Right is Not Enough. It actually goes all the way back to Aristotle.
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He said that there are three parts of persuasion in politics -- legos, pathos and ethos. Legos is what Democrats have been too concerned with in the past -- that's logic and facts. Pathos is the emotions. And ethos is the character of the speaker -- who he is.

What Aristotle said is that the most important thing is ethos. It's, do you trust that person, do you believe that person? And then you will be persuaded about what they have to say. That's why Republicans attack the identity of their opponents -- because they understand that ethos is the most important thing. That's why they're not attacking John Kerry's plan for getting out of Iraq. They're attacking him for being a flip-flopper. That's about who he is, not about what he wants to do.

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And this gets back to what Obama is doing, too. He has a kind of vision of America, and who we are as Americans, that he's trying to persuade us to sign on with. If you declare yourself an Obama supporter, you're declaring your support for a particular kind of America.

Obviously, primary campaigns are extremely complicated, and this stuff, in many ways, matters more in the general election. Primary campaigns are a hundred times more complex than general election campaigns. But I think that the successful candidate is the one who understands what he's trying to tell people that their vote means about themselves, about their country, and how they view themselves in the context of their country. Right now, it looks like Obama, among the candidates, is the one who's doing it best. But I think we'll have to wait until the general election to see if you're going to have two candidates that do it well, or maybe none.