DISQUS

McClain · 5 years ago

If voters grow more conservative with age, the Right will always "know its enemy" better than the Left.

David · 5 years ago

Exactly Will. Being a Democrat, along w/ the rest of the left, we have had to figure out what did we do wrong. At first I was buying into the value argument. But I soon realized that this really wasn't the whole story. It also came down to fear. Fear of being a victim of terrorism again. Looking at the exit poll numbers and polls leading up to the election showed time and again that people felt Bush would do the better job on the war on terror. Regardless of the mistakes/errors in judgement this admisitration has accomplished, people trusted Bush more.

If the left wants to succeed, it needs to not only come to terms on how to speak to the right concerning "values" (w/o condescension), but also explain how they are not the soft on terror party. It's no different than what happend in the eighties and the war on drugs. At that time, the right accused the left of being soft on crime, and the left never truly responded in a way that reassured the public to the contrary.

This election cycle, Kerry never offered up anything in his approach, except vague notions of getting European allies involved, that was much different than Bush's approach. So why would people make a change from Bush to Kerry. The democrats never built a coalitional identity that could draw enough people away from Bush. More people (myself included) voted for Kerry, not because of his ideas, but because we saw the damage done in one term by Bush.

IMHO, that was the left's coalitional identity this time: Bush's policies are the wrong ones for this country and a change must be made regardless of who our candidate is. It almost worked, but for a chance at greater success, and a long lasting success, the left needs to start reframing the issues to our advantage, that engages, and includes all the parties/voters out there. Until that happens, the left will continue to be marginalized.

Anyway, since Lakoff is becoming the de rigueur reading on the left now, I hope you write about your talk in Quebec a couple of weeks ago.
Later.

Kenny Easwaran · 5 years ago

Lindsay Beyerstein's argument is reminiscent of discussions that have come up in some of my philosophy classes surrounding the principle of charity. In most cases, we feel that it is best to reconstruct our opponents' arguments in ways that make the most rational sense and fit with the (well-known) facts. In fact, following Davidson, it seems that we might not even be understanding our opponents' language(s) if we don't reconstruct their arguments in this way. However, it also seems that there are certain cases in which people really do make irrational arguments that fly in the face of certain relatively well-known facts, and indulging in too much charity will obscure this point. I think Lindsay Beyerstein is suggesting that something like this might be the case here (as my colleagues occasionally do with some very poor arguments that come up in certain readings), but I (like you) would prefer to err further on the side of charity. Clearly there are going to be some cases where charity breaks down, but I'd rather hold out as long as possible.

Brock · 5 years ago

Maybe it's not your arguments or identity. Maybe it was the Democrat's ideas. Kerry didn't seem to have any. He had recycled Carterism and Edward's populist rhetoric - stuff a lot of people have left behind as out-moded and dysfunctional.

Maybe a certain percentage of Americans heard Kerry loud and clear and thought "No, you're wrong."

I'm not talking about fundamentalists, either, by the way.