Reply #135: Your analysis in poorly drawn and elitist

[quaker bill]

From the posts I have read here, I would not get that cocky about the average IQ on DU.

There are some very bright and well read folks here, no doubt. But more than occasionally, the dialog fails to impress.

The general notion that conservative issues have been marketed on emotional appeal much more effectively than issues recent centrist democrats have run on is reasonably sound.

The concept that the emotional approach works better in 30 second bites is obvious.

The idea that the left is intellectually based and the right by definition based in ill-informed emotions is simply wrong.

First, if you want to see the emotions of the left, just start a Green party bashing thread. There is rarely any intellectual analysis that crops up in one of these, but they go on and on nonettheless.

Second, we cannot consign our ideas to perpetual wonkishness. Feeding poor kids has emotional appeal. Not blowing up strangers with our military over lies and misrepresentations has basic emotional appeal. Getting people who, to quote Clinton "work hard and play by the rules" a decent living wage has emotional appeal.

Our pResident started dropping 2000 pound bombs on a city with a civilian population of 4 million people before, according to Condi Rice, "He read the entire report" about the putative threat posed by Iraq. It sounds like the act of someone who did not feel that the lives of innocents were worth an hour or two of his time. This has emotional appeal, when the correct approach is used.

We need a candidate with the spine to state things directly and as necessary in emotional terms. Most folks are afraid this will illict anger which can be unpredictable and thus choose to keep the discussion in milder waters. Anger in the cause of justice is no sin. Republicans have known that emotions can be a strong motivator to drive good turnout and have used anger and fear heavily in their campaigns. To win we need to want it enough to be prepared to fire back.

By the way, the middle of the bell curve, by definition always represents the majority of the population. It nearly always occurs between the 80 and 20 percentile range. Know your stats or state them better.