I completely agree with teh premise and have often wondered where the idea that arguing with facts is effective came from. I think from marxian scientism.
Anyway, the facsists and the capitalists and the right argue with emotion, hell, their arguments are usually steaming piles of tripe uttered with such complete confidence as to overwhelm the senses and then they heap on personal abuse and logical fallacies to boot.
But there is always a kernal of truth in there, an emotional truth that appeals to the desires and weaknesses of the masses.
Anyway, I see no reason why debate and polemic from the left should follow "rules' of their own devise when those rules are ineffective.
And when a left person acts like the right, OH the SHOCK HORROR.
" You are better than that." " It's dishonest" It's unethical" ( it's only unethical if you use big fat lies like glenn beck or hannity, or government, or reactionaries ) etc etc
Listen buds, it's politics, not a garden party.
So here's that book. It's quite liberating.
http://thepoliticalbrain.com/videos.php
This groundbreaking investigation by a renowned psychologist and neuroscientist proves it: We vote with our hearts, not our minds
The Political Brain is a groundbreaking investigation into the role of emotion in determining the political life of the nation. For two decades Drew Westen, professor of psychology and psychiatry at Emory University, has explored a theory of the mind that differs substantially from the more "dispassionate" notions held by most cognitive psychologists, political scientists, and economists—and Democratic campaign strategists. The idea of the mind as a cool calculator that makes decisions by weighing the evidence bears no relation to how the brain actually works. When political candidates assume voters dispassionately make decisions based on "the issues," they lose. That's why only one Democrat has been re-elected to the presidency since Franklin Roosevelt—and only one Republican has failed in that quest.
In politics, when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins. Elections are decided in the marketplace of emotions, a marketplace filled with values, images, analogies, moral sentiments, and moving oratory, in which logic plays only a supporting role. Westen shows, through a whistle-stop journey through the evolution of the passionate brain and a bravura tour through fifty years of American presidential and national elections, why campaigns succeed and fail. The evidence is overwhelming that three things determine how people vote, in this order: their feelings toward the parties and their principles, their feelings toward the candidates, and, if they haven't decided by then, their feelings toward the candidates' policy positions.
Westen turns conventional political analyses on their head, suggesting that the question for Democratic politics isn't so much about moving to the right or the left but about moving the electorate. He shows how it can be done through examples of what candidates have said—or could have said—in debates, speeches, and ads. Westen's discoveries could utterly transform electoral arithmetic, showing how a different view of the mind and brain leads to a different way of talking with voters about issues that have tied the tongues of Democrats for much of forty years—such as abortion, guns, taxes, and race. You can't change the structure of the brain. But you can change the way you appeal to it. And here's how…
Drew Westen received his B.A. at Harvard, an M.A. in Social and Political Thought at the University of Sussex (England), and his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at the University of Michigan, where he subsequently taught for six years. For several years he was Chief Psychologist at Cambridge Hospital and Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. He is a commentator on NPR's "All Things Considered" and lives in Atlanta.
