When will the Dems learn?

[sleigh]

Someday, the Dems need to figure out that words actually matter, and that if they let the conservatives define the vocabulary, they will lose every time.

The latest example is the Immigration Bill. The right immediately started pointing and shrieking "It's amnesty! Amnesty!" -- a word designed to make the majority of the public feel uncomfortable and negative, and rather than redefining the issue, using another term, and refusing to fall into that trap, we have everyone on the left saying (with a bewildered look on their faces) "But it's not amnesty. Really, it's not amnesty. Not amnesty."

Look, when you sputter "Really, it's not amnesty," the only word people hear is "amnesty." All you do is reinforce the effect of the word and sink it deeper into the subconscious. You're playing their game. You're doing exactly what they want you to do.

You've already let them turn 'liberal' into a dirty word, which just boggles my mind. After all, 'conservative' can mean to be afraid and tentative, to be behind the times, to be conventional rather than creative, to be overly cautious, to be adverse to change. If anything, you should have made 'conservative' into an invective... and yet you've let them twist 'liberal' into something resembling a curse word -- so much so that half the Democrats are afraid to even use the term.

They did it to you with "cut-and-run" too -- you let them frame the debate with that phrase, then made the problem worse by using the term yourself. "I'm not advocating a cut-and-run policy..." Again, the only word in that sentence that gets heard is "cut-and-run"...

Stop it, would you?

Comments

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that. But the one the pisses me off the most is the way they let the Christian right co-opt "family values."

[lauriemann.livejournal.com]

But we later came up with the retort - "We value families." It just took a while.

If you read Chris Mooney's blog The Intersection (http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/),
he's been talking quite a lot about the importance of framing scientific
arguments. It's been an interesting read. I know I have a bad habit of thinking "but that's so obvious" and not really framing my arguments properly.

Now, considering the number of heinous and hideous ideas the Bush administration has come up with over the last six-odd years, the Immigration Bill is mostly headed in the right direction. Its main two failures were not valuing families (surprise!) and not allowing for (any?/very many?) "fast-track" cases.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"But we later came up with the retort - 'We value families.' It just took a while."

But it sucks as a retort. It uses their frame.