Ask Rockridge: Who the Hell Knows Today Who Will Be Electable in November?

Bruce,

I keep thinking of Paul Wellstone saying, "This time vote for what you believe."

Chuck

Everything you say is excellent except for the vast amount of evidence that shows that in 2004 Bush lost the popular vote and the electoral vote. The exit polls prior to middle of the night "adjustment" by the corporate MSM owners and the ensuing analyses of what happened prove that fraud, hacking and suppression of minorities' votes were rampant, particularly in ten swing states the most prominent being Ohio where it took major and blatant efforts to "win." In 2006, the mid-term frauds, especially the hacked computers, put a minumum of ten Republican members of Congress in seats they had lost. The last minute scandals undercut the advanced computer rigging. Here comes 2008. Every writer who repeats the lie is abetting another repeat of our unsecure, crooked as a dog's hind leg voting, ad nauseum. I should add that the only way we can partially defeat the fix is to support honest monitoring, report observed problems to Black Box Voting and turn out in huge numbers to overwhelm the opposition.

I wish all we had to worry about was voter fraud.

I grew up in a subculture that told me the only good cop was a dead cop and the only good Republican was a dead Republican. Eventually, I moderated my views on the police, but I probably believe the part about Republicans now more than ever.

I have also grown increasingly cynical about our political system. It disturbs me to see the aspirations of dewy-eyed Democrats who don't seem to learn much from the disastrous choices they have made in candidates in the past. Republicans have proven themselves over and over to be masters of Realpolitik, whether it comes to rabble-rousing, vote fraud, blatant lying or whatever else it takes to gain and keep power. Democrats, on the other hand, twiddle around with childish idealism and searches for charismatic saviors and other hopeless quests after fictions that satisfy their need to feel superior and endow themselves with a halo only fitting masochistic losers. Where am I going with this?

Today, in a culture that looks to the next prime time sound-byte for leadership, the Democrats seem content with having been handed the alternative of a woman or a non-Caucasion for their Presidential candidate. Fogive me for not being very optimistic if I say that I really feel we are about at least 50 years away from electing members of either of those two categories to the Presidency (I’m being generous-probably really more like a hundred!) About a year ago, I took a good look at what the Democratic Party had to offer and I slapped a “Clark ‘08” bumper sticker on my car. We were still in the middle of this interminable Iraq thing then and it seemed to me that one of the few militarily successful generals we have had in the last half-century (who was coincidentally opposed to our presence in Iraq) might be a viable candidate. Well, I was wrong. But I think I was primarily wrong in expecting the Democrats to show some common sense and get behind a candidate that could get the cretin vote simply by parading a uniform full of medals. I must say I am a bit disappointed by the result, but I am nowise bitter, since I merely underestimated the Democrats’ ability to do the wrong thing (the expression I am trying to avoid is, “…snatch defeat from the jaws of victory”).

The pimary hasn’t been held in my state yet, but given the possiblility that it may not be all over by then, I plan to go out and vote for whatever male WASP looks like he might have a remote chance to get the nomination. I really believe at this point that any Republican can beat Clinton or Obama merely on the strength of the inherent racism and sexism in our culture. It is all very nice to discuss the subtlties of message when it comes to posting stuff on a web site, but I like to think it would be even nicer to stand a chance at winning-and perhaps winning with a candidate that was not 100% in the pocket of the corporate oligarchy that now runs America.

I share dmbtiger's nervousness about electing non-white-male candidates at the presidential level. This is where I'd like to see Rockridge give a straightforward and forthright reply.

I came across an interesting idea recently in a book by another cognitive scientist, Drew Westen, called The Political Brain, and I'd be very interested to hear what Rockridge (especially George Lakoff) thinks about it. Westen points out that people often have a divergence of conscious and unconscious feelings about race (and gender) that sway their actions, even when they consciously espouse more egalitarian views. In short, people who claim to be non-racists, for example, may still feel and act in ways that are more racist than they consciously state (or consciously believe that they feel).

So, the strategy that Westen recommends, especially in cases of a particular kind of negative messaging that "speaks in code," uses subliminal techniques (which Westen claims are validated by empirical study and have been used in commercial advertising to productive effect for many years), or otherwise tries to deliver an "unconsciously received" message under the radar from conscious awareness, is simply to bring the unconscious message explicitly up into conscious awareness. In short, call them on it, loud and clear, because relatively few people like to think of themselves explicitly as racist, even those adhering to a strong father frame.

In particular (see pages 243 to 248 in his book), he mentions the case of Republican Bob Corker who ran an insidious ad (through a "nonaffiliated / independent" group, of course, to try to establish deniability) against Harold Ford in the 2006 Senate race in Tennessee, which Ford lost. Westen calls this "getting Corkered" and complained that the Democrats never responded by making this an issue, taking the "high road" as has been their custom for awhile, given a perception that people don't like negative campaigning, therefore it "doesn't work" ... but Westen shows that it does work even though people don't like it.

So perhaps the fear here is that similar tactics might work against non-white and non-male candidates. Many people in non-urban areas can testify to the expectation that people around them "would never elect a black" and perhaps it's because of this feeling that underneath our conscious awareness we are collectively not quite as "progressed" as we might reflect in "self-reported" polling.

But when the unconscious messages are brought forward into explicit consciousness, Westen suggests that our conscious rationality has a good chance of overriding the unconscious responses, and that the most important thing is to constantly bring these unconscious attacks and doubts into the cognitive sunlight where they can be neutralized by our "better halves."

So perhaps the answer is that, if Clinton or Obama is the candidate for the general election, and they are aware of these tactics and understand what are effective responses to them and campaign accordingly, they can be "electable" in the sense that if unconscious obstacles can be removed by making the race/gender issues explicit in the right way, to the extent that people (especially biconceptuals in the swing vote) consciously believe that racism and sexism are wrong, to the extent that the campaigns can get them to focus consciously on their opponents' campaign tactics and turn them to their favor in a sort of political jujitsu.

Westen's argument in his book seems pretty convincing to me, but it would be great to get a confirmation from Rockridge/Lakoff that Westen is on track. And if so, it would be really great if the progressive campaigns take this to heart and avoid the pitfalls of the Gore and Kerry campaigns.

(Note: Westen has a big beef with Bob Shrum here, so take that into consideration. That is why I want to hear the Rockridge view: for an independent "second opinion" on the cognitive science diagnosis.)

Take the high road? What too many people fail to realize is who is the fittest in concepts consistent with social Darwinism. A lot of people feel that the most "intelligent" or morally superior or more compassionate, etc. are most fit to survive. Dead wrong! In all instances of social disagreement, the most fit to survive is the person who will resort to the methods of a terrorist. The terrorist wins all his arguments by stabbing his opponent in the back! (Republicans seem usually to realize this intuitively.) They also usually believe that the ends justify the means. That seems to be too messy an idea for a lot of Democrats. If you really think that turning the other cheek wins elections, then I hope you live in some country where that works: I don't know of one. Admittedly, negative campaigning is effective- very effective (not always, of course because it has to usually also be a bit clever.) When was it ever that a Republican office holder was ever deposed by the opposition except when there was some choice bit of dirt that could be used to smear them with? Nixon was the most popular President we ever had until hi blew the Watergate cover-up. Bush has been exposed over and over again for all sorts of chicanery and he is still our President. If he had been caught having sex in the oval office that might have ended differently - that would have been grounds for impeachment (maybe). Rockridge seems to me to be too much of an ivory tower, based on most of the discussions I see here. If the people who run the Institute have aspiration to being a real think tank, they should not be too much in love with Lakoff's ideas to explore other possibilities. Any time you limit yourself to any one set of ideas, you risk becoming just another ineffective splinter group. I don't see Lakoff as being another Lenin of Gandhi when it comes to fostering a movement. I still go with the guy who said, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." Try doing more of your own thinking, guys.

            Dan

MLK won by using passive, non-violent resistance. Ghandi won by using passive non-violent resistance.

The IRA lost by killing people.

Speaking of Darwin, evolve my friend.

I don't disagree that the "high road" of turning the other cheek can often be counterproductive in politics. In fact, that is Westen's point, in the book I referred to above. He definitely wants candidates to strike back when they've been unfairly maligned. The Kerry (non-)response to the Swift Boat attack was what sunk him, not the attack itself, in Westen's estimation.

Westen takes care to differentiate "responsible" (i.e., ethical) negative campaigning from the unethical kind, and he would suggest that Dems stick to the ethical kind, and not shy away from it.

But there is no need to go crazy (i.e., indiscriminate) with negative campaigning either. And it is disingenuous to refer to differentiation messages as "negative" (or more correctly, to view them as "unethical") as long as one is not abjectly lying about one's opponents or making coded insinuations about character, etc., that are artificially constructed. I'm not sure that "terrorism" is in order, if that means lying and contriving in the same way that Republicans design their dirty tricks. One can strike back ethically, and that is the key to fighting dirty tricks.

So perhaps part of the "electability" issue has to do with how well the candidates stay authentic, strike back justly when attacked, and express a value system that conforms to that of both their base constituency and many biconceptuals in the swing vote.

The presence of a woman and a black in leading positions in the current presidential race is frankly unprecedented (either would genuinely "make history" just by winning the nomination, and even more by winning in November), and that uncertainty makes a lot of progressive people nervous, especially when they have a gut feeling that others in the country would be prejudiced and vote according to that prejudice instead of according to their hearts and minds. It seems likely that the Republicans will try to use whatever prejudice they can prompt in the electorate, especially by trying to get such messages in "under the radar" as they've done in the past. We should simply expect that this will happen, especially if Clinton or Obama win the Democratic nomination. But as Westen suggests, it may also be that such strategy can be used against the Republicans by making the bigotry in their messages explicit and bringing it to conscious attention in the right way (and that means powerfully and forthright, not turning the other cheek).

As long as both Obama and Clinton are prepared to campaign in this manner, I don't see that either of them should be considered to be "unelectable" in principle simply because of race or gender. But I hope that they and their campaign advisors "get it" and are prepared to respond actively (and appropriately) if and when the Republicans start up their usual dirty tricks.

Being ethical does not mean being passive. Being passive in the face of attack (especially in the face of unfairly contrived attack) is inauthentic (or weak), and everyone feels that in their gut. When the low blows start coming, counter-punching is definitely in order. It's possible to counter-punch in an ethical fashion, and that is the best response to dirty tricks.