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I've been dredging up my psych major past thinking about what happened to Dean last week. And there were a couple of factors going on that I haven't seen mentioned.
There's a lot of talk on DU about who was to blame. Obviously, Dean and his campaign were responsible for his image. And while the spin made it very difficult, Dean was not effective at countering his supposed negatives. It doesn't matter that the anger and instability were invented -- they were perceived and changed voters' minds.
Voeters can support a winner with personality questions. But losing in Iowa compounded the problem. No one wants to associate with a loser. It's not a noble trait -- in fact, it's a terrible commentary on human nature. But Dean became such a dominant front-runner partly partly because people saw him as a winner. When that image turned, so did his support.
The scream speech itself didn't help, but by itself it wasn't crucial. Personally, I liked the speech. I didn't see what the fuss was about. But some people, including even some Dean supporters, were turned off. Despite the media's irresponsibility (without the hype, how many people would have seen it or remembered it?), the speech was unsuccessful image management.
But what really created the perfect storm for Dean was the circle of taunts over the scream. The media acted like a bunch of Nelsons (the annoying kid on the Simpsons who goes "Ah-hah!.") For a couple of crucial days, it was difficult to find a Dean defender.
This is propaganda and peer pressure at its most destructive. It's basic social psychology -- the blue eyes/brown eyes experiment, for example. It doesn't matter what someone actually does. To be the subject of universal taunts is degrading. There is a sense of shame attached to the target. It is not harmless fun. Nobody is going to vote for a candidate who is universally mocked.
People can be attracted to a candidate if there are two clear sides. One reason Bush has survived is that he has a large vocal base of support. Dean needed immediate defenders in the media, from public figures, from call-ins -- all the people who belatedly decided it was overkill.
But it came too late. Three days is an eternity in the week leading up to a primary. All the people just making up their minds were immediately turned off. No one wants to support the universal butt of jokes.
The result was that the undecided voters were estranged. Cognitive dissonance says that you justify your choices to yourself, especially those which are ambiguous or unclear. You talk yourself into those choices. An argument you might have found persuasive a few days before is dismissed after a choice is made. All those persuadable voters suddenly became unpersuadable.
This is not good news for Dean. I think he is a wonderful candidate and has tried to do the right things to regain his footing (although it unavoidably meant giving some credence to the taunts). It will take a lightning bolt to change the campaign now. It's happened before, but time is running out.
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