Why do people vote republican?
The last few days have spurred an interesting conversation between Robin and me. Both of us have family members who will likely vote for McCain in November. They like Palin. A lot. We're trying to get a deeper understanding of what's going on here.
Our gut reaction is typically something like "Can't you see what they're doing? They're fooling you!" followed by a desperate hope that people will read beyond the mass media headlines and reflect on what's happening.
This feeling is pretty well reflected in pieces like Maureen Dowd's column yesterday, and The Atlantic's recent blog post In Defense of Elitism (which makes an excellent point: if you need to be defended in a trial, you'd want an elite lawyer on your side, right? If you need surgery, you'd want an elite doctor, right? So why don't you want an elite president making decisions about things like whether we should go to war or not?)
But what if our gut reaction is wrong? What if people who vote for McCain do so because they genuinely like his world view better? And by the way, they don't appreciate any suggestions that they're not smart or paying attention.
This is the argument made by Jonathan Haidt, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, in his essay "What makes people vote republican?"
Robin and I both read this essay. We don't fully understand it yet, but we're mulling it over. Let's assume the essay is largely correct. Then what do we do? What are the concrete things we can do to convince our friends and family that voting for McCain is a really, really bad idea?
Our gut reaction is typically something like "Can't you see what they're doing? They're fooling you!" followed by a desperate hope that people will read beyond the mass media headlines and reflect on what's happening.
This feeling is pretty well reflected in pieces like Maureen Dowd's column yesterday, and The Atlantic's recent blog post In Defense of Elitism (which makes an excellent point: if you need to be defended in a trial, you'd want an elite lawyer on your side, right? If you need surgery, you'd want an elite doctor, right? So why don't you want an elite president making decisions about things like whether we should go to war or not?)
But what if our gut reaction is wrong? What if people who vote for McCain do so because they genuinely like his world view better? And by the way, they don't appreciate any suggestions that they're not smart or paying attention.
This is the argument made by Jonathan Haidt, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, in his essay "What makes people vote republican?"
Robin and I both read this essay. We don't fully understand it yet, but we're mulling it over. Let's assume the essay is largely correct. Then what do we do? What are the concrete things we can do to convince our friends and family that voting for McCain is a really, really bad idea?
I hope you've been reading fivethirtyeight.com. This morning, they gave the best answer I've seen to this question. Author Sean Quinn starts with a truism: "You can't talk people out of emotional certainty." They he states that the way to convince someone who's working from emotion (gut/heart) rather than facts (brain) is to -validate- that emotion and take it from there with facts, rather than try to use facts to -counter- that emotion.
Check it out:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/09/dems-must-give-voters-explicit.html
I tried reading "What's the Matter with Kansas?", which is supposed to answer the question in your title. But I only made it through 60 pages. The author spends so much time stereotyping every group in the US (rich, poor, rural, urban) that it became impossible for me to refrain from profanity or take him seriously. But you may feel differently...many of my friends swear by the book.
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I haven't been reading fivethirtyeight.com, but I just added it to my list of daily sites to check. I just read their answer you referred to this morning, and I agree, it's quite good. Sad that it's what we have to do, but good.
I haven't read "What's the matter with Kansas?", but the author Thomas Frank was interviewed on the Bill Moyers Journal, and I thought it was a pretty interesting interview: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08012008/profile3.html
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