The futility of framing as a tactic for the left.

I've been studying Lakoff's thoughts on framing for some time now. I've watched Luntz every time I get a chance. This week's Frontline had a wonderful 90 minute treatment of the whole topic - which isn't just framing. It's the power of marketing in politics.

Many on the left have proposed that we need to get better at framing things to our advantage. If we just had an effective system in place, like the right has with it's media parrots, etc. then we'd be able to compete on an equal footing.

Here's the problem with that: Framing is not just saying things in a way that people are receptive to your ideas. Framing is tapping into emotional forces in the personality that make ideas irrelevant. Is that where we want to go?

The essence of psychological conservatism is certainty in the moral righteousness of your ideology - seeing uncertainty as moral weakness.

The essence of psychological liberalism is having a mind open to the best solutions to problems - being wary of certainty because we know that real solutions are never easy, they never fly in on wings of certainty.

In a framing war the right will always win - because framing is a psychological weapon. And certainty in the righteousness of your cause is always more emotionally powerful than the need to keep an open mind.

That's the practical problem. The real problem though is that democracy itself depends on educated voters willing to keep an open mind in their search for the best solutions, to elect the wisest leaders. We at least need enough of them to comfortably outnumber the zealots. That was the case for the most part in the past. Most politicians, and most voters, were wary of ideological fervor and willing to keep it in check. We'd occasionally go over the line but saner minds usually prevailed and we returned to a more sensible track - as in the McCarthy hearings.

Politicians were generally willing to argue their positions and then have a cocktail with their opponents after the session was over. Profession friendships and honorable opposition was the norm. It wasn't a perfect system but it served us pretty well for 200 years.

Then, Newt Gingrich came upon the scene. He instinctively understood the power of unchecked ideology to put him and his party ahead - where many years of open minded consideration had failed time and again to sway enough voters to place conservative policy ahead of the more liberal values that most American's prized.

He possessed the essential ideological mindset - that he was right and that his ideas deserved to displace the ideas of his opponents - and that any tactics were justified in that moral cause. Of course, those tactics centered around raising the emotionality of politics way beyond the comity of dialog that had served us for 200 years. It had to turn politics into a WWF smackdown for him to have a chance.

Framing is simply a way to attach your position to the most emotional feelings possible in the listener's mind. Advertising agencies have been doing this very well for forty years now - attaching their cars and beer to our need to be accepted, to be seen as sexual, to our need to find the fittest mate and reproduce. They've known for years now that once you attach your product to a person's emotions, they are immune to reason. Reason and cognitive dissonance are a very weak force in the presence of strong emotions.

Problems in society (and in individuals) come in all shapes and flavors. In most cases, the best solutions will have some judicious mix of conservative and liberal ideological elements. The best problem solvers are those who can remain unemotional while searching for that optimal combination.

By embracing framing as a solution to our dilemma - in opposition to the framing that's been done on us by the right - we may gain some short term wins. In the long run though I suspect that the natural advantage that the right has in their righteous, defiant, army-of-God kind of mindset will eventually prevail on that battlefield. We on the left can never out-demagogue the zealots - save a another bloody French Revolution. One can't be defiantly, militantly and outrageously open-minded.

I don't have a solution. Some problems are not soluble and this may be one of those. Civilization has periodically degenerated into periods of zealotry and ideological fervor. These are the reformations and crusades and inquisitions where we have killed millions of our fellow inhabitants on this planet. These are always periods of great pain, unhappiness, sorrow and death.

I believe we are now well into the Second Millennium Reformation. Perhaps, our only recourse is to understand what is happening and resist where we can - but expect that these things don't die out until enough humans have been sacrificed that the zealots tire of their destruction.

It's sad that the democratic system that was designed to relieve humanity from the scourge of mindless ideology by placing political power in the hands of the (hopefully) more sensible, less ideological masses - was finally inverted to serve those ideological interests by the immense power of modern marketing and mass communications.

I'm only willing to go so low in order to win. I intend to stick by my principles (I guess that means that I'm not willing to move all that much). BTW, I'm a Master's in Psych, so I know of what you speak. But playing with this stuff is dangerous business .. I wouldn't want to be the one responsible for it.

And I'm busy teaching my child critical thinking (which is probably why she has an FBI at 8 - just kidding - Mom's got the FBI file - just kidding - I think).

It's like saying "I won't use the internet because I don't like who invented it". Framing is just a tool for communicating ideas. And it's an effective one.

we have to fight fire with fire, in other words.

Liberals need to be forward thinking, use the most up-to-date methods available, not be fearfully rooted in the past.

. . Framing is just a tool for communicating ideas. And it's an effective one.

Ideas are logical constructs. Dialog is the tool for communicating ideas.

Framing is a tool to attach ideas to strong emotions - so that reasonablness is not necessary to get them accepted.

It's like putting a lead weight in your boxing glove. You can win that way - but what you won was not a boxing match. You just found a way to load your gloves with the biggest weight.

I don't buy your boxing analogy, because that involves cheating, plus there would be a referee in boxing, and there is no referee in politics. I don't accuse the republicans of cheating, I think that they are simply ahead of us in communicating. they've figured out about weight lifting and eating lots of protein, and we're not there yet.

to me, framing is the way you get people to look at your issue, the perspective they take when thinking about it (like framing a picture, right?). What we have done for too long is sit back and let them set the stage. And we will never win, unless we learn to match their tactics.

as ''believers'' or ''true believers'' is inaccurate.
while we battle with social conservatives it's true -- we are also at war with the corporate powers that be -- who believe in nothing but the pursuit of great power and wealth for themselves.
democrats, liberals, socialists, lefties of all stripes need to learn they are in a pragmatic fight.
now i disagree with the dlc's interpretation about how to do it -- however i do believe we need to frame positions and go on the offensive.

I often find myself saying to others, or writing, if we could only be like the right, have operatives like they do on the right, be one step ahead, be calculating......the truth is, and you expressed this so well, we as lefties, are not so much lacking this ability, but are refusing to exploit it, it is our weakness and our virtue, and unfortunately our inability to even fathom using some of their tactics will always relegate us to the mercy of free-minded free-thinkers desire to vote, or speak out, or strike out. our verocity comes from a rational place, that can be critically analyzed, it is deep and ever-evolving, their verocity comes from faith and certainty, that never evolves, it only engulfs. we will always fight, but we are spread so thin because we fight for all, they are strong because they only fight for themselves.

does not fulfill his historical duty of rethinking the Constitution, which this mess has been in fact all about for 4 years, the "reframing" will come from the street. Sooner or later. Unfortunately, political heads here think like executives: the only thing they look at is the base line at the end of the quarter.

Framing is not just saying things in a way that people are receptive to your ideas. Framing is tapping into emotional forces in the personality that make ideas irrelevant. Is that where we want to go?

If we want to win, yes. But, contrary to what you may think, this does NOT mean that we have to abandon any of our core values as "small-d" democrats. Rather, it means that we have to play them up even more.

The average person out in the electorate approaches politics from an emotional perspective. They vote for whomever makes them "feel" better. Therefore, if you want to win them to your side, you have to GO TO WHERE THEY ARE, not where you would like them to be. This means that you have to approach them on an emotional perspective, because that's where they are.

Would it be better if we could honestly discuss issues in depth? Sure! But that, unfortunately, is not the way that the real world is currently set up. We have to deal with the situation we're given, rather than continue to act as if things are different than they really are -- that is, if we want to win over the long term.

The choice is really quite simple. Either start speaking to people in terms of the values that we share, and that will resonate with a great majority of the electorate -- or continue trying to talk in terms of the details of policy, in which case their eyes will glaze over and we'll continue to lose elections.

The choice is quite simple, IMHO.

. . we will lose on that level.

Government is about finding solutions to social problems. By abondoning reason and appealing to voters' strongest emotions, we might win a few but we'd probably lose in the long run in that arena.

Liberals can't out-zealot the zealots.

But worse, we would give up what makes us liberal - in the cause of winning. (Sensible, reasonable, fair-minded govennment willing to keep ideology in check for the purpose of finding the best solutions to our poblems.)

So, why fight for same outcome that they wish to force on us?

I'm talking about simply discussing things in terms of the VALUES that are important to us. It's completely possible to remain true to what we believe in while approaching things from this angle. It's called "thinking outside the box". We need to do that, because it's obvious that the current tactics aren't working too well.

For instance, the RW likes to portray themselves as "pro-life". But they're not. Therefore, a good counter-frame (to be said over and over again, ad nauseum) might be "pro-fetus, anti-child". When pressed we could explain, but the explanation isn't the important part. The important part is that we get the idea out there that the RW is "anti-child", and their policies are hurting children. We could label ourselves as "pro-freedom, pro-child". Get rid of the "choice" label, because it's ineffective. It's a lot harder to be against "freedom" than against "choice". And it's damned near impossible to be against children.

See, we're not sacrificing anything in this process, we're simply stating it in a different way that helps OUR side. It's not very different from the RW and the morphing of the "estate tax" into the "death tax". Both stir up different connotations of meaning. "Estate tax" brings to mind the uber-rich passing down an "estate" to their lazy progeny so they won't have to work. "Death tax" is a label that EVERYONE can identify with, so it's much more effective in raising opposition.

WRT Frank Luntz, I've heard him interviewed on these subjects, and he is brilliant at this. He fully realizes that, in order to be effective, you have to go to where people ARE, and then use good framing techniques to take them in the direction you want them to go. What you are advocating is little more than trying to tell people that they should be where you are. It's ineffective at best, counterproductive at worst. You're essentially advocating telling people what they feel may be wrong, and if they want to be right, they need to feel the same as you.

I don't know where you get this idea that "framing" will result in us giving up what we believe in. If anything, the constant "chasing the center" has made us give up much of what we believe in. Good framing requires, first and foremost, that you portray the impression that you stand for certain core values, and that you will work to advocate and defend those values. I don't think that too many of us around here would have much of a problem with the Democratic Party actually standing for something, something that much of the progressive base has stood for for some time, but has set aside repeatedly at the urging of "caution" from party elites who have failed us over and over again.

in regard to abortion. I am pro-life, and by that I mean that I oppose killing in war, killing by means of the death penalty, killing by abortion and killing by euthanasia, and killing as collateral damage of economic policies, as occurs when people starve to death. We need to focus on the harm done to children by the policies of conservatives. Don't waste energy criticizing their (and my) opposition to abortion. You can't convince them or me that killing unborn children is "freedom" (which you suggest as a preferred term for "choice"); you'll just attach negative emotions to the word "freedom." Instead, focus on life after birth. Focus on truly leaving no child behind -- on making sure every child has proper food and medical care as well as educational opportunities.

Simultaneously debunk the right's assertions about "personal responsibility." Conservatives will seriously tell you that people should be responsible for providing for their own needs, and in the next breath be complaining about the shortcomings of Medicare/ Medicaid in providing for the care of their elderly parents! We have to show them the craziness of that. We have to show them that government is a necessary part of our lives because our economy is structured so that few people can be "personally responsible" for the total financing of their health care and retirement living needs -- among many other things, such as education, which we all agree are good and necessary things.

More later -- must go to dental appointment!

is in the machines. ;-)

We have seen people in the red states voting against their own economic interests. All those core issues democrats stand for must be expressed in moral terms because that's what it ultimatly comes down to when you deny some one a job, healthcare, education, civil rights. Democrats need to pick up their bibles and begin to speak again in moral terms.

My political beliefs are derived largely from the values I learned during my Presbyterian upbringing. A good summation of them can be found in the Sermon on the Mount.

Seeing how the church is often the center of community through much of the "heartland" and deep south, and therefore is an important part of people's lives, it makes perfect sense to talk of our policies in regards to these Christian values.

In other areas of the country (especially more metropolitan and suburban areas), we don't necessarily need to be "biblical" about it, we must need to hit the same values themes.

Nothing to see here.

I really don't understand why so many people think that framing is inherently "bad" or "lying". Framing is a tool, nothing more or less. Whether one uses that tool to promote a lie or a truth is up to the user of that tool.

We don't have to outright lie in order to frame effectively. We can continue to stand for certain values. Of course, I personally think that exaggerating or even occasionally lying about the Republican agenda in the course of framing is effective as well, because politics is a gutter sport and not meant for those not willing to get in the mud once in a while.

Arggh you read my post before I could delete it. After reading more of your posts I read a different meaning into what you had in mind with respect to framing.

I agree framing is not useless for the left. I also think it is lying or at least deceptive, but I use a very general definition.

It is deceptive to cheer someone up, but it's also benign.

People like manipulating each other, using deception for purposes that are not harmful. The problem is not really with manipulating other people, it is manipulating them in a way that allows you to profit from their misfortune that is wrong.

So, I still think that the right is better at using deception, because they are actually and intentionally dishonest in the worst way. So, their attempts at deception are done much more confidently.

Framing, "benign deception" should be able to be used effectively by the left I think. A primal desire for freedom and independence exists, I think.

Framing is tapping into emotional forces in the personality that make ideas irrelevant

Framing is extremely important to how debates evolve and whether they are even "winnable" in a prgamatic sense. Consider the gay marriage debate. It has been somewhat successfully framed by the Right as some vaguely defined threat to heterosexual marriage. For decades gays were seen as promiscuous -- now the Right undermines those who seek monogamy. If the issue was framed as being about monogamy versus promiscuity, how could RW audiences be moved to support and argue for promiscuity?

Framing can happen without the media being in some conspiratorial role. Some of framing happens when the right confrontation is photographed or videotaped. When Rosa Parks sat on that bus, she create a frame for the issue -- One courageous elderly woman versus people going out of their way to be mean.

It isn't everything but I think framing works.

Some of the framing on the right is in terms of negatives I think. For example, based on hatred of "them queers".

I agree there's no primal urge for open-mindedness, there might be the inverse primal aversion to failure due to stupidity.

While the idea of framing is largely contrary to the goals of the left or whatever we are, there are some instances where it is not unhealthy to pursue a carrot toward some end. It's not bad to raise people's spirits out of depression with something that makes people smile, for example, as long as it is not extreme to the extent of say the stepford wife "christians" and their chronic happiness-lite.

So, what is something primal that is not "addictive" that is conducive to a desire for real freedom, justice, independence, community etc.? Framing in terms of that could be appropriate I think.

It's a form of rhetoric, not deception.

Every complex idea requires frames of reference, including specialized "code words" and phrases. This is because complex ideas can be expressed in a very large number of ways. Framing is one of the ways the communicator can control the implicit meaning of the message, just as good composition skills give control over the explicit message (i.e., the text).

For instance, are you "Pro-Abortion" or "Pro-Choice"? Do you "condone flag desecration" or "support freedom of expression"? Are you for "individual sovereignty" or "reckless selfishness"?

As George Bush would ask, "Are you FOR us or AGAINST us?"

The Frontline program itself framed Framing as a negative thing, setting its focus on political manipulation, advertizing, and what has become known as "spin". Yet those are all very small applications of Framing.

Deception is not required in Framing; there is no reason to avoid studying it. Rhetoric has gotten an undeservedly bad name, but it's no more an imposition than following accepted "rules" of grammar or spelling.

Better a war fought with words than with guns and bombs.

--bkl

reframe the way we talk about "values" to get across our point of view.

For example, he talks about "tax relief". According to Lakoff, this phrase was devised by the right as a way to control the public debate and understanding of taxation. The word "relief" implies the right's view that there is a burden that is in need of lightening; so whenever anyone talks about "Bush's tax relief plan", whether they're for or against it, they are reinforcing this idea that there is a burden that needs to be relieved. It also immediately frames the way the public understands the issue.

The right knows that framing the debate with this phrase puts the left in the position of answering a question similar to "Do you still beat your wife?" No matter how you answer it you lose. If you say you're opposed to tax relief, then you come off as wanting to keep the tax burden on people. If you say you have your own tax relief plan, well, then you come across as sort of a "me, too" GOP-light.

What Lakoff recommends is reframing the debate so that the left does not agree to the language the right is using to frame the debate. Instead of "tax relief", he recommends the left frames taxes as investments. He rattles off a long list of great accomplishments we've made as a nation thanks to the taxes paid by previous generations (the Internet being one of them).

Anyway, regardless of whether you think this approach will work or not, I don't think that Lakoff is advocating attaching "your position to the most emotional feelings possible in the listener's mind." I think he's saying that words matter and we need to get savvy about how we talk about things in making our case to Americans. If we're always reacting negatively to what the right says, we're not advancing our vision. Inadvertantly, we're advancing the right's message.

It's like Lakoff says: Don't think of an elephant.

I would imagine that, despite my best effort to keep you from doing so, you still thought of an elephant.

Same goes for, "I oppose Bush's tax relief plan! It benefits the wealthy."

Hmmm. Why is this guy so down on easing my tax burden?

Just my two or three cents worth.

. . but beneath all that, framing is still attaching your ideas to stronger emotions than what the pukes have done.

Taxes will always be easier to attach to hate for government. You've got the IRS and the FBI ready to haul you in if you don't like it. Most people don't like paying taxes and believe that others get away with paying less than their share - and that they pay more than their share.

It takes a very reasonable person to see that the benefit of pooling our assets to pay for some things that we all benefit from - outweights the pain of paying taxes - even when burocracy is inefficient.

The pain is an emotion. To see the benefits requires a logical process. There is little emotional payoff in that. People naturally prefer emotion to reason.

Then, when you have politicians telling you to be angry about paying taxes, there's no contest.

You think re-framing on the tax issue makes sense. But you already agree with that position.

People who'd much rather indulge their emotions than their reason would be completely immune to that tactic.

Lakoff is making the mistake of believing that voters are reasonable rather than emotional decisionmakers.

That's only true when politicians on both sides offer reasonable alternatives and voluntarily keep emotional appeals in check - for the good of the system.

Gingrich overturned that sensibility - and has filled government with ideologues who are ready to appeal to fiery emotions at the drop of a hat - and to call anyone who thinks reason is a better approach, girlymen.

what real liberalism is all about. Their perception of reality is shaped by mainstream media news and, worse, Limbaugh, Hannity, etc.

I think if we're ever going to make any headway in getting a coherent vision of America promoted by the left to these people and to younger generations, we better start making OUR case, rather than always reacting to (or, worse, adapting) the conservative case.

I believe we can make a case that will be more appealing to the working class and what's left of the middle class than the right's vituperative message. Especially as the poverty rate continues to rise and more jobs continue to go overseas and we watch our children's futures get crushed beneath elephantine deficits or ripped apart by RPGs in Obscuristan.

Lakoff is making the mistake of believing that voters are reasonable rather than emotional decisionmakers.

I think you're incredibly mixed-up on this issue. Lakoff's approach recognizes that in order to advance your argument, you need to approach people on an emotional level. That's what FRAMING does. It's a tool, nothing more -- one that can be used for positive purposes or negative purposes. It's simply a tool to get people to identify emotionally with a particular point of view.

What you have said in just about every post you've made on this thread is about denouncing the approach of people on an emotional level as somehow debasing our arguments, and insisting that we instead approach them on a reason level.

Do you not see that the reason approach cannot work when people are not operating on that level? I really don't see why you're putting such a block up against this line of understanding. :shrug:

You make some good points, but I think the way you're characterizing "framing" is wrong. You portray it as a set of ideological blinkers that you must put on and encourage others to put on. That's not the case. The idea of framing is simply using the most powerful and emotive words and analogies to make your case. That's all.

There's a wonderful Slate article on the subject here: http://slate.msn.com/id/2109374

When talking about abortion, for example, the author writes that we should remind voters that right-to-life extremists would "force a woman to bear her rapist's child even if she had to die doing so."

That's a powerful image. One could even go further and say that those extremists would force a woman to bear her rapist's child even if doing so would kill BOTH woman and child. They aren't right-to-lifers at all, but force-to-birthers.

We liberals have been reluctant to use such pointed words and phrases in the recent past, preferring a friendly exploration of the issues. But our opponents are not friendly, they are deadly. And they are no more interested in exploring the issues than Columbus was interested in exploring America. They are engaged in conquest, and their objective is our complete destruction.

We must recognize this. All of us.

This means we must use more emotional imagery, and more intuitive analogies to get our points across. The stakes are that high. But expressing our beliefs in a compelling way doesn't make anyone a "mindless ideologue". It just makes the consequences more vivid. What's mindless is letting the opposition define and destroy us because we're too polite to speak up and show others the grotesqueness of the world our opponents want to force us all to live in.

The flaw I see is that you may be generalizing a little too much. I agree that there is little chance of swaying the zealots, but that isn't really where the battle is. There is a large group of people in the middle who are not zealots. And of those, I think some do pay attention and are informed, and make their decision based on logic and how their world is affected. And others do not pay attention very much and therefore are suseptible to how a message is framed. They will likely respond to emotional triggers, and to attract them, we have to identify the triggers in our message and use them. The triggers are there, and it is not deceptive or negative to use them. Personally, I think Howard Dean knows about this and instinctively uses it. here is a quote from the DFA site:

"The President successfully turned a discussion about moral values into a discussion about gay marriage and abortion. I think moral values are also about how you treat poor people, how you treat those who are different, how you respect the opinion of others, and what you leave to your children. On those moral values, I think the Republicans lose. We need to talk about these values too."

One thing current day conservatives do that we can learn from is that they understand that their message will not be accepted by everyone. And it is true that our message will not be accepted by fundamentalists and war hawks. We will not get their votes, and we should stop watering down our message so that we don't annoy them. The best we can hope for is that when we win, they will see that our way is not too bad and they can at least tolerate us.

Out of time...thanks for posting!

after all, we backed the Kerry nuanced positions, didn't we?

When Rove talks, he talks not about hating gays---because those who hate gays are already well in his camp--but of activist judges and activist local officials forcing gay marriage. Note how he lines up everything--people who would accept gay coworkers, gay elected officials, gay children, gay friends, can find it wrong for gay marriage to be brought to their locality because a judge in faroff Massachusetts found his state constitution allowed it. You can find it troubling if you don't like broad constitutional reading. You can find it troubling if you like state's rights. You can find it troubling if you think people should directly vote on that sort of big issue. You can find it troubling if you think marriage isn't a civil right. You can find it troubling if you don't like proponent's argument that marriage is just another government benefit.

Now, how did we frame the issue? Well, we didn't, since there wasn't any concerted effort to address gay marriage, or gay unions, in a united way. Framing anti gay marriage as merely being anti gay loses, since the Mass supreme court and SF mayor took their own action and allowed Rove to frame it as above. Fear and Rove filled the vacuum. All we had was pictures of happy couples being married in violation of California state law, which we found touching.

We need a website just devoted to discussing how best to frame liberal issues, and bring more people in.

Because we no longer have to be serious and sensible. We are a true opposition party. We are never going to win another national election in the foreseeable future, so we can say whatever the hell we want. We don't have to have a viable plan. We don't have to address our wedge issues. We don't need unity, and we sure as HELL don't need to worry about alienating the swing voters!

Our proper stance right now is to step away from the levers of power (so that when the ship runs aground we can't be blamed) and retreat to picking faults and finger-pointing, mockery and cheap shots. We should realize that the Republicans are the government, the establishment, now, and should overlook no opportunity to make fun of them.

Americans love this kind of thing. It's the slobs vs. the snobs. Once we acknowledge that we don't matter politically and can't win no matter what we do, we can be the clown princes of politics. Bomb throwers to the fore! Let Jon Stewart be our model, as Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl in days gone by.

In 2008, we should run someone like Al Sharpton. Someone who won't even pretend to be trying to win, but who will take advantage of all the free publicity to attack every absurdity, every misstatement, and every miserable failure of the party in power. He could be like Bullworth, or Howard Beale. Of course, you have to remember what happened to both of them . . .

Maybe not to the point of nominating Al Sharpton, but...:)

I sort of think of us right now as being in the position of the Animal House, after they have all been expelled. We are in a position where we have nothing left to lose by just going for broke, and we could lose everything and sink into total irrelevence by trying to play it safe.

So let's go destroy the great Republican Homecoming Parade. I kind of like that idea.}(

Narrative stories -- books and movies -- have structures built on logic and not just emotion. Democrats should put their policies into logical narrative frameworks. Just repeating the mantra "jobs, healthcare and education" is much less effective than explaining to people the logical framework that contextualizes those individual policies.

Repeating "jobs, healthcare, education" is not framing. It's simply just repeating a catchphrase.

A frame would be connecting the policies surrounding these issues back to our basic values. Education is "investing in our future". Healthcare is "investing in our workforce" and "boosting our economy", and so forth.

A good framework/narrative has aspects of both emotional and logical approaches. However, in order to first grab people's attention, you have to aim for the emotional. It's only once you've reeled them in with an emotional hook that they'll be willing/able to listen to reason on the issue.

is NOT a good frame, and is not a frame at all.

Take another look at what I wrote.

When it comes to frames meant to reach people on an emotional level, there is very little in the way of "logic" and "explanation".

That doesn't mean that logic and explanation should not be a part of our overall frameworks, because it certainly should. But we need to recognize that these are clearly not an integral part of reaching people on an emotional level.

That's why "jobs, healthcare, education" is an ineffective frame, as you pointed out. There is no emotional appeal to it, just a series of three words in sequence.

Their meaning, their allegories make sense.

That's what I was saying.

"jobs, healthcare and education" do appeal to emotions, but without the framework explaining the bigger picture, they're less effective.

the left appeals to logic and not emotion.

What will triumph is a narrative which joins honest emotion with the truth.

But I think that we can agree that when it comes to emotion w/o logic going up against logic w/o emotion, that emotion w/o logic usually comes out on top.

I fully agree about the need to combine both logic AND emotion. That's our winning combination.

given that she's an author who reduces complicated, sophisticated truths about imperialism, gender and class down to 200 pages of romantic fiction.

Just kidding. ;-)

. . my purpose in this post was to get people thinking about what this really means.

I'm for framing issues to our advantage.

I just believe that we should be aware of the built-in disadvantage that reason has against emotion.

It all makes so much sense to us. If those voters in the middle could just see the reasonablness of our position, that it is for their own good, as well as for us. We want a better world.

It makes sense because we are sensible. We are wary of emotional arguments. That's what liberal means.

They are not. Their emotions have been successfully attached to conservative causes. 9/11 assured the repukes that there was no way we could stop them - if they placed themselves as the strong savior of fearful America - and us as the comprimising, weak-assed appeasers.

They did that. There wasn't much we could do to stop them. Fear is an incredibly strong emotion. They grabbed it and used it shamelessly to destroy us.

I just think it is foolish to believe that we will now be able to appeal to the sensible voters out there. They don't exist - or they are in the minority who voted for Kerry. The repukes will not let go. If we start to make any headway there will be another terrorist attack (that will probably happen anyway).

They will then say we were attacked because we did not present a unified anti-terrorist message to the world. The terrorists saw weakness in the Democratic candidates. The terrorists believed their God was stronger.

They will wave the flag, start the draft - and to the strains of Battle Hymn of the Republic - millions of Democrats (though few at DU) will give up and switch parties rather than be blamed by their neighbors for American deaths.

It makes sense because we are sensible. We are wary of emotional arguments. That's what liberal means.

That isn't what liberal means. Liberal means open to change, forward thinking, etc. There is most certainly an emotional element of that very definition. For example, investing in education is forward-thinking, because it is investing in our future. Investing in healthcare can have an emotional connotation as well.

I'm wary of emotional arguments simply because I pay attention to the details. The average person out there, however, does NOT -- and wishing it to be different won't make it so. That doesn't mean, however, that that person isn't open to liberal arguments placed in an emotional context that reaches him.

Once again, framing is simply a tool that helps someone to advance their argument, nothing more or less. It isn't necessarily "dumbing down the argument" or "not being sensible". It's an approach meant to reach people on an emotional level, a level that EVERYONE operates at, whether they want to admit it or not.

. . who have great insecurity because they are not in charge. Others are making the decisions. So, mobs react emotionally, not reasonably.

The only way they can follow a wise course of action - is to have leaders who understand the importance of not enflaming passions.

Framing is attaching political positions to strong emotions, hopefully stronger than your opponents' positions and emotional hooks.

Lakoff is advocating an emotional arms race. Even if we win that race (where we have a structural disadvantage) we'll still lose. Emotional solutions from the left are not wiser than those from the right. Both turn away from reason and place winning over finding the best solution to problems.

Keep trying to appeal to the masses on the basis of reason alone. It seems to be working quite well right now. :eyes:

Those of us who recognize that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again yet expecting a different result will be working on EFFECTIVE ways to get a progressive message out to the American people.

In fact, I said there may be no solution to this problem.

I believe the right is on a jihad. It could well be that they won't stop until they've run out of hate.

Perhaps, the best approach is to let them.

In the meantime, we can speed that outcome by refusing to fight on their battlefield. That could just make the battle last longer and produce more casualties. The more emotionally we respond, the more they will fight and the more righteous they will feel about it. And, as I said, I belive we can not out-hate them.

Many on the left have already decided that strong emotional appeals from our side are the only answer. Many of you in this thread.

I won't oppose that. I'll even join in the battle if that's where we're headed.

I just think it's good to understand where this could probably lead.

Nobody is talking about using only emotion. Framing ideas within a narrative in order to help people understand them is as old as human civilization.

What's the bible? What would have been more powerful? Printing up a leaflet with the ten commandmants and passing it out at supermarkets? Or writing story after story with allegorical representations of those ten commandments?

Framing allegorically gives people way more context and gets the point across much better than just stating your theorems abstractly about how the world works and hoping that people get them.

See, here's the problem with your analysis: you want the democrats to stay in the past, to continue to fight battles with republicans using outdated means of communication. You want a gentlemanly sword fight, but they are blowing us away with machine guns....

They've discovered the most modern up to date method of communicating with Americans: boil stuff down to five word sound bites, framed carefully from their point of view and repeat, repeat, repeat....

The word liberal means "moving forward". WE SHOULD BE THE ONES OUT IN FRONT ON THIS!!!! The fact that we fell asleep at the wheel, shouldn't make us say, ok, let's salvage our pride and turn backwards to how we campaigned in the 1930's.... we should be, as a forward-thinking people, going "oh cr%p, we gotta catch up fast!!!".

Look to the future, and the future is framing/marketing political ideas!!!!

So why worry about having to stoop? Lakoff clearly distinguishes between Orwellian-type framing and that which seeks the most effective presentation of values. The latter is what progressives must hone.

Little money is spent on federal funding of abortion, and having a Democratic candidate actually say he's against it would do more for us then try to just phrase things differently.

that point was brought up because the right has preached that to their people, and so that is what they ask in the debate.

The point of framing is to lead the discussion in the direction of your choosing.

I think we have to accept the Bread Theory: No matter how thin you slice it, it always has two sides. Even the republicans have a side to every issue they can present in some decent fashion. The trick is to get everybody looking at it from the same point of view. That's framing, and now that they are in the framing business, we better get there as well.

Human behavior is not rational. Emotional appeals are the only way to move a mass of people.

"Can't nobody here play this game?"

The unstated premise in your post is that humans can sperate logic-emotion where that binary doesn't, and can't, exist. We are feeling beings and how we feel influences how we think. Psychological appeals aren't necessarily appeals to "blind ideology."

Even those of you who are so "emotionally committed" at this point in extracting victory from our defeat - that you call me clueless.

Excess emotionality in a democracy is what will kill it. But that choice was made by Newt Gingrich and it could well be that we have no choice in the matter now.

Perhaps you are right - and only a full-out battle to destroy them before they finish us off is all that's left for us. In that case, there are no rules worth following other than those that ensure victory. Like I said, I'm ready for that if that's where we are.

This thread was just to point out that we will not be winning a fight for liberal values - and what we end up with may not be worth it, even if we succeed. I hope I'm wrong about that.

Peace

between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans try to get people to vote with their limbic systems, or reptile brains, while Democrats try to get people to vote with their neocortex.

This seems to me to be a losing battle. The limbic system is far more ancient and operates at a much deeper and more primal level than the evolutionarily recent neocortex. I'm afraid that in order to compete successfully, we have to not move towards the center ideologically, but rather to find some way of tapping into the voters reptile brain with appeals to very primal emotions.

How to do this without sinking to the moral level of Republicans, and with some level of respect for the voter left intact, is a real issue worth thinking about.

I believe we have to recognize that we are not going to sway the most committed repubs, just like we are not going to be swayed by them. So we are flogging an expired equine trying to find a way to talk to them. It is a certain group of folks in or near the middle who we need to connect with better. Some of them WILL respond to reason, and some of them only to an emotional hook. No reason we can't do both. We need all tools available.

We used to have an emotional need to be proud of liberal values. Education, tolerance, culture. In fact, one of the reasons Bush gets elected is because those in the middle are still being tolerant and open-minded of the right wing political agenda, giving what they say more credence than the actual results. The trick is to get people to have pride in tolerance and critical thinking again, make them see they are buying propaganda that doesn't match the results.

Wise people are those who have learned to feel good about using the full capacity of their reason to solve problems.

We have to learn that. It's not natural. As someone else said here, the neocortex is a new tool for us. It is not fully integrated with the emotional system that is actually in charge up there - and has been going back to the first life on earth.

The trick is to learn to attach our emotions to the successful use of our reason. You hit is right on the nose.

But that's feeling good indirectly - about being a worthy person, a good person. It's always easiest to go with the direct emotions of hate and fear. Even if we make the wrong choice, logically, at least we enjoyed those great feelings of righteous emotion for a while. The future is always a question - but we know that the emotional struggle will always be immediately rewarding, even if we lose it in the long run. The great ability for all humans to discount future value. That's why young men enlist to go to war.

This thread was about my worry that we are going away from that ideal of using the neo-cortex to reach solutions - we're trading that off in order to win. And that perhaps, what we will win if we prevail (which is doubtful) won't be worth it.

Whomever owns the mass media own the frame. There is little can
be done to reframe "death tax" when it is repeated with such constancy.

"the wish is parent to the thought." I see all thought as ancillary
to the point, and as a framer myself, i've no problem letting them
take over the framing completely, as it ultimately subverts them
when no resistance is offered to their "thoughts". Rather i
simply "wish" otherwise, and ignore thoughts.

If someone wants to be framed, then that is their "wish" and who
am I to ask them to be otherwise. If they want a well reasoned
alternative, people can get on the web and find one if THAT is their
"wish".

I really think it boils down to first principals these days, not
this frame or that. I can tell in 10 seconds of meeting a person
whether they are attached to the puke frame, or not... sometimes
much less depending on the appearance. We must win our battles
one on one, word of mouth, heart to heart.

Mass media frames are the antethesis of heart to heart engagement,
and always will be. There is little point in selling the drug
addicts a drug free life. Better to listen for those who want out
of the life of addiction when they come asking, as it is indicative
of their "wish".

"Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of the
morality emanates from its class interests and its class feelings
of superiority." - John Stewart Mill

"The press of the United States? It is a parasitic growth
that battens on the capitalist class. Its function is to serve
the established by moulding public opinion, and right well it serves it.
- The iron heel by Jack London 1908 pp. 87

you write:

Framing is not just saying things in a way that people are receptive to your ideas. Framing is tapping into emotional forces in the personality that make ideas irrelevant. Is that where we want to go?

Ideas do not - CANNOT - exist in an emotional vacuum. The structure of our brain dictates that every thought subliminally activates other, related concepts, thoughts, and associated emotions.

If the opponent manages to associate concepts central to liberalism with negative frames, we have no choice but to offer alternative, positive frames, or to capitulate.

Emotional forces do NOT make thoughts irrelevant. They are the glue that binds concepts like "living wage" to the image of the overworked mom, holding down two jobs to make ends meet, and thus to our value system: is it RIGHT that people bust their butts in the richest country on earth and still have their kids go hungry and neglected because their parents are being exploited?

Should this concept be associated with people who spent their youth partying and blowing off school, and not preparing for the challenges of real life, thus having wasted their chance and deserve no better (the conservative frame - reinforced by the conservative narrative), or with people who may have tried their best, but never gotten a real chance, and thus deserve a helping hand (the classical 'bleeding-heart' liberal frame)?

Or is there a better frame, a better way to look at this problem, that breaks through the preconceived images and suggests a clear stance and moral course of action?

Framing is not just about how you want other people to think - it's also about exploring ways to make yourself think better.

I heartily recommend Lakoff's earlier book "Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things". It demonstrates just how much of our ordinary, everyday thinking is influenced by subconsciously applied frames and metaphors. This is not because we are a gullible species, but because it is hard-wired into the very structure of our brains and bodies. We cannot escape frames and into pure intellect.