The brand that the Republicans have given the Democrats is that they're weak in the face of aggression, and the Democrats have repeatedly proven themselves to be weak in the face of aggression. The brand that the Republicans have given the Democrats is that they have no values, and the Democrats have repeatedly, on issues from abortion to gays to guns to, I mean, name your wedge issue, they have been hedging in the face of those values issues as opposed to saying what they believe. So in all of those cases they're supporting the conservative narrative as opposed to offering a counter-narrative.
The strategists for the Democrats in Congress seem to think that it's their words that matter, when in fact it's their deeds that matter, and the muddled messages that they convey when they back down in the face of an aggressive attack speak volumes to the American people about who the Democrats are. If they're trying to change the perception that the Democrats are weak in the face of aggression, the first way to do that is to stop being weak in the face of aggression at home and to stop being fearful every time the Republicans rattle their sabers.
This is where I think Americans have more wisdom than Democrats give them credit for. I think the American people understand when someone is showing cowardice, and I think they understand when someone is voting against his or her principles, and they reward that with electoral losses. And they should reward that with electoral losses.
So the fact that after the Iraq war vote in May, when the Democrats capitulated to a president who's at 28 percent in the polls pushing a war that's at 30 percent in the polls, the fact that the Congress' ratings in the polls dropped by 15 percent in the next two weeks should have been a signal to them that they should stop thinking about right and left and start thinking about right and wrong ...
The irony in all this is that attempts to win the center by capitulating because you're afraid that you're going to be called left are the most self-defeating thing that you can do to try to win the center.
If you look at [Virginia Sen.] Jim Webb's response to the State of the Union address this year, Democrats should watch the tape of that over and over and over until they get it in their minds that here is a guy who is as centrist as you can get, I'm not sure that he's even left of center, but what grabs people in the center about him is that he knows how to throw a punch. He can do it with conviction. When he speaks about national security he can take what is thought of as a left-wing position, which is the most stridently antiwar position anyone really is taking ... and enunciate that position with crystal-clear clarity as a values issue: that families like his are willing to sacrifice their lives for the country, but that the flip side of that contract is that their leaders have to be judicious in the ways they call for them to sacrifice.
[snip]
The basic thesis of my book, or one of the basic ideas of my book, is that Democrats don't understand the degree to which emotion matters and the development of emotionally compelling appeals matters. They tend instead to focus instead on either policies, or facts and figures, or calculations that tend to be miscalculations most of the time about what happens if they do X. If they would devote some of their resources to what the Republicans devote theirs to, which is essentially marketing, and to develop emotionally compelling ways to talk about the Iraq war or terrorism, they'd stop finding themselves constantly in the box of saying, "Well, we'd better not do that because they'll brand us as weak on terrorism or as weak on national defense."
It isn't hard to come up with phrases as simple as, when you look at the FISA act, "We were supposed to teach the Iraqis about democracy, not the other way around." That's not a difficult concept for people to understand. Or similarly, if you simply say to Americans who have kids who are going off for the summer or for a semester abroad, "I wouldn't do that if I were you, because our government has created a new set of rules internationally by which your child can be snatched up by any country that wants to snatch them up, hold them hostage, torture them indefinitely ... and it is our government that has set the rule on that under George W. Bush and the Republicans" ... When we talk about the suspension of habeas corpus or the creation of wiretapping laws or the creation of a secret court system, we use words like "habeas corpus" in public, which don't belong in public. Those belong in courtrooms. But "habeas corpus" essentially means that you'd better not send your college student abroad next year. That's how Democrats should talk about this stuff if they want to stop betraying their principles.
Mr. Obama, you might want to read this next section from Westen, especially after all your rhetoric about "changing the tone" and your insistence that you can play nice with Republicans:
If Democrats weren't guided by the wrong vision of how the mind works, they would have understood years ago that these are the kinds of things you develop answers for, and it doesn't matter what else is being said. When they bring this stuff up, you come back right away with a response to it that puts it to bed.
I think a good example of this is the attempts by the right to play on Barack Obama's name by calling him things like B. Hussein Obama. If you understand how the brain works, you understand that the more times people hear "B. Hussein Obama," the more they think, "He's foreign, he's Islamic, and he sounds like Osama," and the more they develop emotional associations between Obama and all of those things that they don't like.
So a way that Obama could handle that that would address any masculinity issues that are raised against him, any national security issues that are raised against him as well as the implicit or unconscious, sort of stealth racist appeals that are involved in those comments ... is to say to Ann Coulter, who calls him B. Hussein Obama all the time, "Listen, my name is Barack Obama, and I expect to be called that. I call you Ann Coulter. My name is not B. Hussein Obama, my name is not Osama, it is Barack Obama, and you will address me that way."
Now imagine if Barack Obama spoke like that. Immediately people would say, "Wow, this is one tough son of a bitch. We'd better not mess with him." If you want to talk about winning the center, that's how you win the center if you're Barack Obama. It's not by saying, "Let's get along with Ann Coulter." It's by saying, "Ann Coulter, you will not talk to me that way. You will not talk about me that way. This is my name."
Howard Dean gained traction in 2004 because he was an "I will take no shit from anyone" kind of guy. Then John Kerry and Dick Gephardt pooled their resources in Iowa to paint him as "angry", believing (erroneously) that "gentle politics" are what Americans want. Barack Obama is making the same mistake today. Americans may be sick of the aggressive tone of politics today, but they respond to it. For decades, Democrats have claimed that Americans don't like the negativity we see in ads. They may not -- but they respond to it.
Like it or not, you do not respond to this:
You are going to be regarded as a wuss. It doesn't matter that this kind of insanty shouldn't warrant a response. Look at the cheers from this crowd and tell me that this kind of appeal to the reptilian brain doesn't work.
For Republicans, it's not about leading. It's never about leading. It's about power -- gaining power, keeping power, ensuring that no one can take away your power. And they understand what you have to do in order to get it. The Democratic presidential candidates are all intelligent people; far more intelligent than any of the drooling, slack-jawed dick-wavers running on the Republican side. But to underestimate the power of emotion over reason is to guarantee defeat.
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