I've been following Lakoff since the early 2000s - met him once when he spoke at San Jose State. And I do think that giving ideas for what to say is incredibly useful - I've found his framing of taxes as "the dues we pay to live in a civil society" is one that I use a lot. We have many people who help tame the firehose; I don't know anyone else who is doing the work you do.
I've been writing columns to attract "purple" voters toward the DFL (Minnesota) using a soft nudge, using their (presumed) underlying values. It is, as you said, very difficult, especially if we want to nudge several disparate underrepresented groups! So far, I've been focused on "rural" voters (Greater Minnesota) and older voters and the urban purple fringe (parents, a bit wealthier than average), but hope to work on younger voters (a mess, according to "Generatons...") and young men, among others. Any help on messaging would help. In exchange, if you want to discuss environmental issues, I am a retired professor with 40 years of environmental research experience - I might be able to fill in gaps!
Love reading your work and share it with close friends. I am a senior on very limited income and don’t have the extra cash to pay for subscription. (My old car is a diesel-$7+/gallon.)
I truly, truly appreciate your column. It frequently informs social media posts that I create for my county Democratic party. As a retiree, I find it difficult to pay for all the subscriptions folks would like to have, even as I understand the desire to be fairly compensated for all the work that producing these projects requires. So I'm torn. Perhaps there could be a means-based subscription ranging from $0 to $1 to $5 to $10...something like that.
I *might* pay for a subscription, but that would require juggling my other paid substacks. Would that help you advertise on Facebook more, like Bulwark does? I know that's not the place to reach Gen Z. Can you get some exposure on podcasts so you can reach a wider audience?
“…people are now being asked to subscribe separately to every columnist, author, podcaster and TV channel.”
The NON-mainstream media, independent journalists and other expert, content producers need a distribution solution/model that makes it easier for consumers of information to not deal with so many silos and costs. Substack also holds near monopoly control and when they allowed Nazis on their platform I moved to Beehiiv but most did not.
Too much of our approach across so many aspects of our society is zero sum vs growing the pie…
But thank you for creating this survey and for your invaluable posts—more people need to know about framing AND definitely more of us need to employ it.
Good questions and not easy to prioritize. Showing the percentages of votes while someone is taking a survey has a significant influence on their choices and your results. Daniel Kahneman would not approve.
We are about to engage Paul Lepage for our second district after having Jared Golden. He was not always in line, but he was realistic which one has to be, (He did not cross over to Fetterman territory!) I have been trying to build up language to address what would work best for the district's more northern folks given that the ideas of LePage will actually hurt them. Attacking Trans athletes are really not gonna lower their heating bill.
Everybody's an expert. Many people who voted for Bernie went on later to vote for Trump. That should be deeply illuminating, but Democratic leaders don't seem to want to go there. In fact, when people complain about the "old" politicians who should all retire, they don't mean Bernie. Wonder why. In a broader sense, the last thing the Dems should do is preserve the status quo and the standard corporate democratic policies, because that won't differentiate themselves from Republicans. I am old enough to remember the Democratic Party circa late 1960's, and see how we have drifted right since then. This was accelerated by Bill Clinton, who reframed the Dem party as a corporate Republican-lite party. So the problem is more than how to message. Sure, it's social media and disinformation, but It's a matter of substance, and the toxic effect of corporate Capitalism on National politics, racism (the civil war never really ended) and the dumbing down of the American people (granted a low bar).
Thinking of the Democratic party before 1972 without acknowledging the Nixon onslaught in winning the south via his southern strategy is inappropriate. The south started becoming solid Republican with that effort. Johnson was a Southern Democrat before he was the Democrat that passed the Civil Rights Bills. Also keep in mind both parties were fairly close even n regards to civil rights (the Dems slow and the southern Dems even slower.) But they were almost completely white and male. The discussion was how to let others in. They did if they still maintained the status quo. Now we have had Barak, and Shirly along with the O'neill's and Edward...Clinton was no raging liberal and then there was Barak. Bernie showed up 25 years ago from VERMONT as a Dem Soc. Where is everybody else, they are four women of color who the founders NEVER planned to have in the policy discussions. John Osoff cannot be a Bernie! The battle in the Democratic party is as much still pleasing the racists and sexists in the general NATIONAL population while needing the AOC's in their states.
Talk about how they would lead, what policy would they make to address their issue. Also, it is important to keep in mind that a lot of the die hards exist because they are racist or closet racist and believe they will not accept anything if Black people and POC have it as well. Thus, in some cases "Why do they vote against their own self-interest?" answer. Complete FOX et al watchers are probably a lost cause because the world they see/live in is has some lost reality. What do they want for themselves and do their neighbors matter?
1. we’re in the middle of a human rights catastrophe and very few people are focusing on that.
2. The Democrats are the largest human rights, rule of law organization in the country, and GOP manages to fix blame on them. It would be funny if it weren’t so horrifying. (No, Democrats aren’t perfect. But seeing panicked people spread blame on our best hope for the future, often echoing right wing media, is sickening.)
3. How can we bring people together to fight ICE, concentration camps, and the racism that underlies that and is coming straight from SCOTUS.
If you can help me, and I have taken, and learned from, your class, I would be so grateful.
It's difficult to fight racism without making racists who don't realize how racist they are more defensive. If we can't win by focusing on corruption 24/7, then all is futile.
Black Lives Matter made a huge difference across the country. ICE is a big racist op. I know there are many virulent racists in this country, but there are also many who want to protect everyone. And if we act like racism doesn’t exist, we betray people we’ve been betraying for centuries. Of course we can have multiple focuses. But after SCOTUS has killed the VRA, we’re asleep at the wheel if we don’t talk about GOP use of racism to win. Same with misogyny. White men, white people, always vote for the GOP for President. But they (we) are a minority now.
Appreciate your deep wisdom re effective communication. If there are ways to get more rising Democrats to pay attention to your framing please do. Still see too much of your"don't do this" advice being ignored and, having followed you for awhile now, it makes me cringe because I know that you know that those regurgitations of what "they" said doesn't work. It has also begun to influence which individuals and groups I support with the modest funds I have.
It is rare for me to wish we were “wealthy” in our retirement, however IF we were there are so many Substack authors we would support. Please know that we appreciate all of you who can afford paid subscriptions that allow the rest of us to learn on your coattails. Thank you.
It's so frustrating that dem campaigns don't use Lakoff's teaching in their canvassing and outreach materials. I made my own talking points outline for canvassing because the handouts for the 2024 election weren't even remotely close to the messaging we needed. How do we get better buy in from the teams who are writing up these materials? It would be helpful to get more action items but it's so hard to counter the coordinated talking points that get sent out around all of the right wing influencers.
I've been following Lakoff since the early 2000s - met him once when he spoke at San Jose State. And I do think that giving ideas for what to say is incredibly useful - I've found his framing of taxes as "the dues we pay to live in a civil society" is one that I use a lot. We have many people who help tame the firehose; I don't know anyone else who is doing the work you do.
I've been writing columns to attract "purple" voters toward the DFL (Minnesota) using a soft nudge, using their (presumed) underlying values. It is, as you said, very difficult, especially if we want to nudge several disparate underrepresented groups! So far, I've been focused on "rural" voters (Greater Minnesota) and older voters and the urban purple fringe (parents, a bit wealthier than average), but hope to work on younger voters (a mess, according to "Generatons...") and young men, among others. Any help on messaging would help. In exchange, if you want to discuss environmental issues, I am a retired professor with 40 years of environmental research experience - I might be able to fill in gaps!
Love reading your work and share it with close friends. I am a senior on very limited income and don’t have the extra cash to pay for subscription. (My old car is a diesel-$7+/gallon.)
Thank you for all you do.
I truly, truly appreciate your column. It frequently informs social media posts that I create for my county Democratic party. As a retiree, I find it difficult to pay for all the subscriptions folks would like to have, even as I understand the desire to be fairly compensated for all the work that producing these projects requires. So I'm torn. Perhaps there could be a means-based subscription ranging from $0 to $1 to $5 to $10...something like that.
I *might* pay for a subscription, but that would require juggling my other paid substacks. Would that help you advertise on Facebook more, like Bulwark does? I know that's not the place to reach Gen Z. Can you get some exposure on podcasts so you can reach a wider audience?
I do not have an advertising budget, but I could try to do some podcasts.
You hit on a key issue here:
“…people are now being asked to subscribe separately to every columnist, author, podcaster and TV channel.”
The NON-mainstream media, independent journalists and other expert, content producers need a distribution solution/model that makes it easier for consumers of information to not deal with so many silos and costs. Substack also holds near monopoly control and when they allowed Nazis on their platform I moved to Beehiiv but most did not.
Too much of our approach across so many aspects of our society is zero sum vs growing the pie…
But thank you for creating this survey and for your invaluable posts—more people need to know about framing AND definitely more of us need to employ it.
Good questions and not easy to prioritize. Showing the percentages of votes while someone is taking a survey has a significant influence on their choices and your results. Daniel Kahneman would not approve.
You can see the results? I checked the box that says "Hide the total vote count from readers." Substack poll tool leaves a lot to be desired!
We are about to engage Paul Lepage for our second district after having Jared Golden. He was not always in line, but he was realistic which one has to be, (He did not cross over to Fetterman territory!) I have been trying to build up language to address what would work best for the district's more northern folks given that the ideas of LePage will actually hurt them. Attacking Trans athletes are really not gonna lower their heating bill.
Everybody's an expert. Many people who voted for Bernie went on later to vote for Trump. That should be deeply illuminating, but Democratic leaders don't seem to want to go there. In fact, when people complain about the "old" politicians who should all retire, they don't mean Bernie. Wonder why. In a broader sense, the last thing the Dems should do is preserve the status quo and the standard corporate democratic policies, because that won't differentiate themselves from Republicans. I am old enough to remember the Democratic Party circa late 1960's, and see how we have drifted right since then. This was accelerated by Bill Clinton, who reframed the Dem party as a corporate Republican-lite party. So the problem is more than how to message. Sure, it's social media and disinformation, but It's a matter of substance, and the toxic effect of corporate Capitalism on National politics, racism (the civil war never really ended) and the dumbing down of the American people (granted a low bar).
Thinking of the Democratic party before 1972 without acknowledging the Nixon onslaught in winning the south via his southern strategy is inappropriate. The south started becoming solid Republican with that effort. Johnson was a Southern Democrat before he was the Democrat that passed the Civil Rights Bills. Also keep in mind both parties were fairly close even n regards to civil rights (the Dems slow and the southern Dems even slower.) But they were almost completely white and male. The discussion was how to let others in. They did if they still maintained the status quo. Now we have had Barak, and Shirly along with the O'neill's and Edward...Clinton was no raging liberal and then there was Barak. Bernie showed up 25 years ago from VERMONT as a Dem Soc. Where is everybody else, they are four women of color who the founders NEVER planned to have in the policy discussions. John Osoff cannot be a Bernie! The battle in the Democratic party is as much still pleasing the racists and sexists in the general NATIONAL population while needing the AOC's in their states.
Talk about how they would lead, what policy would they make to address their issue. Also, it is important to keep in mind that a lot of the die hards exist because they are racist or closet racist and believe they will not accept anything if Black people and POC have it as well. Thus, in some cases "Why do they vote against their own self-interest?" answer. Complete FOX et al watchers are probably a lost cause because the world they see/live in is has some lost reality. What do they want for themselves and do their neighbors matter?
How it’s framed in my mind:
1. we’re in the middle of a human rights catastrophe and very few people are focusing on that.
2. The Democrats are the largest human rights, rule of law organization in the country, and GOP manages to fix blame on them. It would be funny if it weren’t so horrifying. (No, Democrats aren’t perfect. But seeing panicked people spread blame on our best hope for the future, often echoing right wing media, is sickening.)
3. How can we bring people together to fight ICE, concentration camps, and the racism that underlies that and is coming straight from SCOTUS.
If you can help me, and I have taken, and learned from, your class, I would be so grateful.
It's difficult to fight racism without making racists who don't realize how racist they are more defensive. If we can't win by focusing on corruption 24/7, then all is futile.
Black Lives Matter made a huge difference across the country. ICE is a big racist op. I know there are many virulent racists in this country, but there are also many who want to protect everyone. And if we act like racism doesn’t exist, we betray people we’ve been betraying for centuries. Of course we can have multiple focuses. But after SCOTUS has killed the VRA, we’re asleep at the wheel if we don’t talk about GOP use of racism to win. Same with misogyny. White men, white people, always vote for the GOP for President. But they (we) are a minority now.
Thank you for the efforts and work on this important topic
I approached this survey using two questions:
1. Which of these topics are being covered by other writers (journalists, podcasters, etc.)?
2. Which topic provides the fundamentals that help us think through the other topics on our own?
There are many other folks writing to explain the neuroscience of framing (#1) and tame the news (#2).
There is no one else I have found who is telling us what to say (#3).
Knowing what to say implicitly teaches us how to frame the news (#4) and set the agenda (#5).
Thank you for all your hard work on this.
Appreciate your deep wisdom re effective communication. If there are ways to get more rising Democrats to pay attention to your framing please do. Still see too much of your"don't do this" advice being ignored and, having followed you for awhile now, it makes me cringe because I know that you know that those regurgitations of what "they" said doesn't work. It has also begun to influence which individuals and groups I support with the modest funds I have.
It is rare for me to wish we were “wealthy” in our retirement, however IF we were there are so many Substack authors we would support. Please know that we appreciate all of you who can afford paid subscriptions that allow the rest of us to learn on your coattails. Thank you.
It's so frustrating that dem campaigns don't use Lakoff's teaching in their canvassing and outreach materials. I made my own talking points outline for canvassing because the handouts for the 2024 election weren't even remotely close to the messaging we needed. How do we get better buy in from the teams who are writing up these materials? It would be helpful to get more action items but it's so hard to counter the coordinated talking points that get sent out around all of the right wing influencers.