Really interesting op ed on the Huffington Post about emotion vs intellect in voting. The writer points out that the only president to get re elected since the great FDR was Clinton and that was because of his emotion on the sleeve thing.
We are far more into the policy part and the brain part than the average voter. We care about the policy. But, most people know that the dems have similar proposals for all issues and want to know the basics of what they will do. Not the point plan.
the republicans have been kicking us for years because they know this.
from the article:
Behind every campaign lies a vision of mind -- often implicit, rarely articulated, and generally invisible to the naked eye. Traces of that vision can be seen in everything a campaign does or doesn't do.
The vision of mind that has captured the imagination of Democratic campaign strategists for much of the last 40 years -- a dispassionate mind that makes decisions by weighing the evidence and reasoning to the most valid conclusions -- bears no relation to how the mind and brain actually work. When campaign strategists start from this vision of mind, their candidates typically lose.
Democrats typically bombard voters with laundry lists of issues, facts, figures, and policy positions, while Republicans offer them emotionally compelling appeals, whether to their values, principles, or prejudices. As a result, we have seen only one Democrat re-elected to the White House since Franklin Roosevelt -- Bill Clinton, who, like Roosevelt, understood how to connect with voters emotionally -- and only one Republican fail to do so -- George H.W. Bush, who ran like a Democrat and paid for it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/drew-westen/winning-hearts-and-minds_b_52893.htmlLink here to read full article.