The political brain by Drew Westen

Author:Drew Westen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Presidents -- United States -- Election -- Psychological aspects., Political campaigns -- United States -- Psychological aspects., Voting -- United States -- Psychological aspects., Political parties -- United States -- Platforms., Political psychology., Emotions -- Political aspects., United States -- Politics and government -- 1989-, United States -- Politics and government -- 1945-1989.
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2008-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

right-wing propaganda or prejudice. They are associations born of experience. We fail as a party and as a nation when we deny those truths rather than turning moral problems into moral imperatives. Paradoxically, if Democrats were just to acknowledge the legitimate concerns of conservatives—concerns about violence, drugs, absent fathers, and teenage mothers—they could turn conservatives' descriptions of these problems into a prescription for change and their callous indifference into a moral problem. Acknowledging what is wrong in our inner cites—and in many parts of rural America, where poverty and its attendant social problems are just as devastating to children, whether white or black—and making it our national calling to do something about it, would appeal to the values of many in the political center. It would also appeal to many evangelical Christians, whose faith tells them that there is no greater sin than having two coats when your neighbor is cold and has none.

Over the last four decades, the Democratic Party has lost many voters because of its principled stand against racism. Sometimes, courage has its costs. That's what makes it courage.

But Democrats have also lost many voters—including moderate suburban, rural, and working-class voters—by failing to acknowledge a number of realities that they could see with their own eyes. 36 By the mid- to late 1970s, not only was welfare becoming a way of life that was a dead end for its recipients and a drain on the taxes of working people, but violence was turning our inner cities into war zones. The breakdown of the family and the skyrocketing rate of illegitimacy was not just a concern of right-wing, sex-obsessed ideologues, although it was that, too. It was a prime cause of a host of social ills that not only could have been predicted but were predicted by Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the early 1960s when he was an academic, and for which many branded him a racist.

In the intervening thirty years, Democrats have done little to convince the average American that they "get it." Instead, when faced with unpleasant facts about poverty—for example, that child abuse and neglect are rampant in our inner cities—those on the left often respond with denial, including denials that are patently absurd to anyone who has ever worked as a teacher or case worker in the inner cities.

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