George Lakoff's analysis of the Democratic congressional victory has some great ideas about the November election and who won, who lost and why. The whole thing is well worth reading, but here's the nut of it:
In short, the Democratic candidate who campaigned on conservative values lost; those who may have had such values, but campaigned on their progressive values, won.
Like Shuler and Casey, swing voters are biconceptuals, with both conservative and progressive worldviews in different areas of life and with both available for politics. How did these biconceptual candidates appeal to biconceptual swing voters? By taking progressive positions, and campaigning vigorously on them. How did this work? They activated the progressive values in the brains of swing voters.
Why did it work? Because swing voters, being biconceptual, already had many progressive views. A large proportion of those identifying themselves with the word "independent" or even "conservative" happen to have progressive views in many issue areas: They love the land — as much as any environmentalist, even though they wouldn't use words like "biodiversity"; many are progressive Christians who take Christianity to be about helping the poor and serving the needy; many are civil-libertarians, though they would never join the "too liberal" ACLU; and most care about their families and empathize with people in dire straights. In short, these are self-identified "conservatives" and "independents" who have very real progressive values in important areas of life.
In the last ten years or so, the national media have tended to oversimplify the electorate by dividing the country into "red" and "blue" states and voters into "Republicans," "Democrats" and "swing voters." Perhaps the media apply these broad labels out of laziness. Perhaps it comes out of pressure to meet the impossible deadlines of the 24 hour news cycle that demand instant analysis, no matter how simplistic. Perhaps it is part of the efforts of Gingrich and Rove to define liberals as wildly out of touch with American values. What I see Lakoff doing is reminding us that most people are not as unidimensional as that--and that when candidates understand that and use that idea to their advantage, they have a better chance of winning.
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