Reply #39: I find your analysis dangerously oversimplistic [View All]

You are making the common (and dangerous) mistake of plotting voters out on a bell curve, as if their beliefs were monolithic in placing them at some point on a linear scale. The reality is that most people have beliefs that are conservative in some areas, and may be incredibly liberal in others. Many of us here on DU (myself included) represent those rare manifestations in which almost ALL beliefs are liberal, in some cases "off the scale".

The American Prospect ran an excellent series of articles on this in a recent issue (I believe it was September 2003). One article in particular spoke of this situation in which most people have both authoritarian and nurturing aspects in their personalities, and that the trick of effective campaigning was not necessarily to cater to one or the other (which is what you seem to be doing, by advocating "moving to the center"), but to instead do the best job of playing to the side of their personality that your party represents.

An excellent example of this "duality" at work (summarized in the TAP article) would be a fictitious working-class family, in which the father is a member of a trade union. This voter may have an authoritarian household in which he is the patrician "head of the family", but still exercise nurturing values in the workplace through his union activism. Likewise, a junior executive of a corporations may express it in the other direction, maintaining a more "nurturing" home environment, but playing an authoritative role in the workplace.

The key to winning is not necessarily "moving to the center" -- although, I agree with you that no election can be won without them. The key is to successfully sell the ideals of the Democratic Party -- ideals more associated with the "nurturing" side of people -- as appealing to their more "nurturing" characteristics.

This could be done to the working-class union father by talking up ideas of economic fairness, reining in corporate excesses, and so on. It could be done to the corporate junior executive by standing up on issues like sensible gun control measures (i.e. the assault weapons ban) and environmental protections. Meanwhile, members of the "base" won't feel abandoned, because you'll be hitting THEIR issues as well.

To place this analysis in some kind of linear perspective, as you have done, is dangerously deceptive. It doesn't accurately reflect the reality of voters out there, and therefore, offers up false prescriptions for capturing them. While I appreciate the effort that you have put into it, I find too much at fault with it to accept it as a viable working model.