All politics is personal

[xthread]

Thanks to yesthattom for leading me to crystallize my thoughts on this subject.

George Lakoff (of Don't Think of an Elephant) posted a discussion about framing discussions about Immigration Policy from the Progressive end of the political spectrum. It's good, but it lacks punch, and his core frame (Nurturing Parent) makes my teeth itch. Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist, has also been doing work (obviously from the other side of the aisle) on Immigration Policy framing, and a memo for candidates was recently leaked, and has been getting a lot of play in the blogosphere.
They're both very interesting, but I think that in general the Luntz effort is orders of magnitude better. Luntz basically tells the candidate 'here are the terms to use that will appeal to what the public already believes they know about the issue.' Lakoff talks about 'here is how to talk about the issue in a way that is much more comprehensive.' Unfortunately, not only is the Lakoff framing reliably more complex, it also has much less punch, because it asks the voter to step outside their own frame, while the Luntz spin basically reaffirms what the voter believes they already know. Even in the case where the Republican candidate is speaking to a Hispanic audience, who he expects will have personal connections to illegal immigrants, he still poses his frame in a way that affirms the self-perception of the listener. The Lakoff framing is mostly about other people, the Luntz framing is about the voter the candidate is speaking to.

And that really sums up what I think is wrong with Progressive communication in general today: Their communication appears to be about other people, even when it isn't. And Conservative communication is all about the person listening to the message, even when it isn't. This means that the Progressive communications are failing on two counts: first, talking to prospective voters about other people's interests is a much less effective way to win votes than talking to prospective voters about them, and secondly because talking to someone about other people in the context of the listener is a much more respectful and engaging way to communicate. Talking to people about other people in the context of the other people is pretty much only going to engage people who have an academic interest in the other people in question, or who are simply academically interested in the world. Trying to win elections by having academic conversations about people other than the prospective voter is a sucky way to try to win elections.

yesthattom's original post, and my comment to it, are here.

EDIT: People have been linking to this, I've unlocked the post.

Comments

[palecur.livejournal.com]

a Hispanic audience, who he expects will have personal connections to illegal immigrants

This is pretty much the core thing that's wrong with the current Administration's weird illegal-immigrant schizophrenia. Sucking up to illegal immigrants does not endear one to the existing, legally immigrated Hispanic population. My Mom and Dad don't have patience for line-jumpers -- they went through the process, and they expect anyone else who wants to come here to go through the process too. Amnesties and such only serve to alienate and annoy them -- and middle-aged Latinos tend to be socially quite conservative as well as entrepreneurial, making them a pretty natural Republican constituency.

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

The Bush Administration is stuck between opposing parts of their supporters. I don't think this is at all a question of sucking up to the illegals by proposing "a path to citizenship"; I'm pretty sure this is in service to the need for low cost labor in a whole lot of service industries. It serves the dual purpose of maintaining that low cost labor pool (though possibly more expensive than before; if the labor pool has rights it can insist on, the abuses will (hopefully) wane and wages will rise somewhat) rather than attempting to deport it, and by both making illegal border crossing harder and providing that "path to citizenship" it more or less puts the blessing of legality/legitimacy on those already here who actually "follow the path" (thus making the republican law & order types happy, or at least less unhappy).

The only ones who won't like this are the ones afraid/upset at all the brown people who can't speak English all over the place. Bush is betting that this segment (once you exclude the others I've already mentioned) is small enough to be ignored for now.

I don't think the illegal immigrants desires figure in the administration's calculations at all. They can't vote.

[xthread.livejournal.com]

Yes, 'Path to Citizenship' is pretty interesting, actually - it gets some backing from the democractic side of the aisle by letting more immigrants in and looks a bit earthy crunchy, it lets the industries whose current levels of profitability depend on the current immigrant population get the labor force that they need, and gives Law & Order folks a fig-leaf with which to not prosecute those industries back into the stone age. And, as you point out, it distresses hard-core Nativists, but it also distresses the rather large population of people who feel a visceral sense of anger at people they feel are line-jumping. I don't get that visceral rage, but enough people report it that it has to be addressed, whether that's by discussing other elements of the problem, passing draconian enforcement legislation, or holding our fingers in our ears saying la-la-la-la, I can't really comment, but it needs to be respected and responded to.