Coarser Realities

After a string of elections characterized by “the politics of personal destruction,” what progressives have yet to come to terms with is that for conservative leaders elections are not about issues or ideas or what is best for the country. They are about establishing dominance, baser instincts. They are about which dog can pee highest on the tree. A businessman with RNC connections recently told a friend, Democrats keep losing because they just don’t get it. “They try to appeal to people’s best interests,” he said. “We appeal to the lowest common denominator.”

Hoping that away will not make it happen. Understanding and confronting it might.

Political leanings are shaped less by reason than we prefer to think. The Times of London reports that a recent study in the journal Science suggests that “nature, as well as nurture, could play a defining role.” A person's positions on hot-button political issues "can be predicted accurately from the way their bodies respond to frightening stimuli." The testing exposed subjects identified as strongly liberal or strongly conservative to disturbing images and sudden, loud noises.

The results … revealed significant differences in both responses, which corresponded with people’s political views. Those with “markedly lower physical sensitivity to sudden noises and threatening visual images” tended to support liberal positions, while those with strong responses tended to be more conservative.

This would fit with the hypothesis that people who have more fearful responses to perceived threats are more likely to be conservative, while those who have weaker responses develop more liberal views.

What you make of that is a matter of perspective. What conservative leaders made of that (without fancy studies) is a matter of history. Building a progressive future will require a broader understanding of the American political landscape while factoring in these coarser realities.

First, the understanding part. Jonathan Haidt, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, contrasts liberal and conservative views of morality in an article for Edge, entitled, “What Makes People Vote Republican?” He defines morality as a “system of interlocking values, practices, institutions, and psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible.” In Haidt’s view, liberal morality is built upon how people treat each other (harm/care and fairness/reciprocity), while conservatives emphasize ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. Research leads him to two conclusions:

First, when gut feelings are present, dispassionate reasoning is rare. ... This is the first rule of moral psychology: feelings come first and tilt the mental playing field on which reasons and arguments compete. If people want to reach a conclusion, they can usually find a way to do so. The Democrats have historically failed to grasp this rule, choosing uninspiring and aloof candidates who thought that policy arguments were forms of persuasion.

... the second rule of moral psychology is that morality is not just about how we treat each other (as most liberals think); it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way.

When Republicans say that Democrats "just don't get it," this is the "it" to which they refer.

Haidt’s experience of living in India was a lesson in coming to terms with a different moral order “on its own terms, not on mine.” His analysis of the American moral landscape includes prescriptions and this “graphic” analogy:

... people who call themselves strongly liberal endorse statements related to the harm/care and fairness/reciprocity foundations, and they largely reject statements related to ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. People who call themselves strongly conservative, in contrast, endorse statements related to all five foundations more or less equally. ... We think of the moral mind as being like an audio equalizer, with five slider switches for different parts of the moral spectrum. Democrats generally use a much smaller part of the spectrum than do Republicans. The resulting music may sound beautiful to other Democrats, but it sounds thin and incomplete to many of the swing voters that left the party in the 1980s, and whom the Democrats must recapture if they want to produce a lasting political realignment.

Now for the coarser realities. Living among voters in the south, I come to the same conclusions. The problem with Haidt’s analysis, the professorial responses to it, and too much analysis in the progressive blogosphere is just that – they are, as Barack Obama often is, too professorial, too removed from the street.

Buried at the end of a string of commentary on Haidt at the Edge, is an observation from Roger Schank, a retired professor. He reminds his peers that while they live in a world “where reasoned argument is prized. I live in Florida.” He provides examples of what he hears from people on the street:

Obama is a Muslim. His pastor hates America. In fact nearly everyone outside of America hates America. If you travel outside of America, go on a cruise, so you won't have to eat whatever it is one eats in those places. You don't want to talk to the people either, but that’s not a problem because none of them speak English. And, anyway they all hate us for our freedoms. Obama will put Al Sharpton in the cabinet. Dick Cheney was the greatest Vice President in history. The Jews are running the country anyway.

... They don't like wussies. The Democrats are always nominating wussies,—men who are not men. Obama looks like his wife runs the show at home. Kerry? Gore? Dukakis. Wussies. Not real men. Bad people are trying to kill us. We need to kill them first. Those guys wouldn't pull the trigger.

"I am not making this up. This is not a caricature. I wish I carried a tape recorder, " Schank says, and he’s right. Most of that is unfiltered FoxNews and conservative spam. Complex analyses are nice, according to Schank, but basically, “Most people can't think very well.” They weren’t taught to. It doesn’t help with standardized tests. Schank concludes, “Republicans do not try to change voter's beliefs. They go with them. Democrats appeal to reason. Big mistake.”

I will not go that far, but agree that when cruising through states like mine (NC), liberals and progressives on the whole still have not learned to show respect for local voters by learning their language. They would get more out of the visit, personally and politically, by listening through locals’ ears for what they care about rather than assuming to know. As Haidt suggests, “feelings come first.” If we want to win people’s votes, we first have to win their hearts and earn their respect by showing some.

Skeptic magazine publisher Michael Shermer observes in his response that attempting to diagnose (as Haidt alluded) what makes people vote Republican reveals a bias conservatives see clearly but liberals seem not to:

We could just as easily characterize Democrats and liberals as suffering from a host of equally malevolent mental states: a lack of moral compass that leads to an inability to make clear ethical choices, an inordinate lack of certainty about social issues, a pathological fear of clarity that leads to indecisiveness, a naïve belief that all people are equally talented, and a blind adherence in the teeth of contradictory evidence that culture and environment determine one's lot in society and therefore it is up to the government to remedy all social injustices.

Prejudice cuts both ways.

Cultural differences aside, Haidt found out that understanding his Indian hosts became easier once he realized he liked them. Will Rogers – known for never meeting a man he didn’t like – might observe that it is oxymoronic to ask people you don’t like to elect you as their representatives. They will know you don’t like them before you do. Empathy, on the other hand, has political as well as spiritual and evolutionary advantages. It is the kind of positive common denominator progressives should cultivate.

Let’s return to that that brag that Democrats lose because they try to appeal to people’s best interests, while Republicans win by condescending “to the lowest common denominator.”

Progressives who empathize with "values voters' " concerns might reply by pointing out, Why do you attend church, if not to feed your souls? And why would you support people who treat you as though you have none?

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future