To Change a Mind is a Difficult Thing
Billions are spent every election to change votes. Not much to change minds. The messages bombarding our senses play to the beliefs, hopes, fears and prejudices we already hold. I am like you. Vote for me.
Your vote is the prize sought. That is the single goal. Your beliefs, hopes, fears and prejudices are used, but left untouched.
Changing thoughts and attitudes is more difficult. But absolutely necessary. Democracy cannot long survive when the prevailing emotion before an election is near terror that the other side will win.
Persuasion is not for one election, but for the long run.
Persuasion is built on connection, trust and confidence. Abraham Lincoln, a better politician than most, recognized that change doesn’t come without a personal relationship. In an early speech to the homefolk in Springfield, he said, “If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him you are his sincere friend.” That is the way to his heart, “which when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause really be a just one.”
Note the absence of manipulation. The friendship is sincere; the cause just. That takes time. It can’t be forced.
Lincoln knew that you can’t sell a program to the voters until they are ready and that a leader can’t move forward without popular support. In her Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of Lincoln, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin attributed much of his political success to an “exceptionally sensitive grasp of the limits set by public opinion . . . an intuitive sense of when to hold fast, when to wait, and when to lead.”
We have difficulty with the waiting and step-by-step-by-step progress. We have a vision and are eager to make things better. Saul Alinsky, the most prominent radical agitator and organizer during the 1960s, was also an advocate of patience. In Rules for Radicals, he wrote, “It is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be. . . . Effective organization is thwarted by the desire for instant and dramatic change . . . To build a powerful organization takes time. It is tedious, but that’s the way the game is played—if you want to play and not just yell, ‘Kill the umpire.’”
Familiarity and trust built over time drove the results of the Democratic presidential primary this year. Joe Biden’s years of working with Black communities made him the winner. Bernie Sanders’ ongoing association with Hispanic and young voters brought him in second. Newer candidates, even though Black, Hispanic, and younger, couldn’t break through the connections already in place.
Voters of all kinds and all persuasions are cynical. Messengers who parachute in just before elections are met with a justifiable skepticism difficult to counter.
The message, as well as the messenger, matters.
To persuade, you have to talk about what matters to the person before you. The message is about them and their future. It starts with where they are. What they are experiencing. Why it is the way it is. How it can be fixed.
You have to demonstrate that you understand their situation, you know the details and the steps necessary to deliver a different outcome.
The message is conveyed in a story that gathers up individual facts and makes sense of them, explaining why they are the way they are.
People feel the hurt of not having health insurance or paying more than they can afford. The story tells them why. Government regulations are too strict, the private-sector has been stifled and can’t operate freely, there isn’t enough competition. Or, alternatively, the private sector has run amok, costs are not controlled, and health care is run largely by insurance companies and large medical conglomerates that make huge profits.
We can’t address the facts without a story. We have to understand why health insurance is out of reach before we can craft a solution. If the story is false, the solution will not be effective. The story that resonates with what people are experiencing persuades.
Persuasion requires identifying with and respecting the other. Persuasion listens before talking. Persuasion welcomes and does not dismiss. Persuasion brings the other into the group as a full and permanent participant, not just the beneficiary of temporary largesse.
The “call out” culture does not persuade. You may feel good because you expressed yourself, but that is the only benefit. Through the many conflicts she engaged in, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg kept in mind that the goal was persuasion, even to choosing the right word and the right word order because that “could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea.”
“Fight for the things you care about,” she said, “but do it in a way that will lead others to join you … Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.”
Elections are intermittent. Candidates come and go. If persuasion is to be done at all, the Party has to take up the ongoing and never-ending task. To do it successfully, the Party has to first rethink its goals, its focus, and its structure.
The prize is worth the effort. Persuasion can bring people to the cause and create a lasting political movement. It is not easy, nor done quickly. Changing a mind is a difficult thing. But possible.
Douglas Kane is the author of "Our Politics: Reflections on Political Life" published in 2019 by Southern Illinois University Press
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