Why Voters Aren't Motivated by a Laundry List of Positions on Issues

Provides an introduction to cognitive policy – the values, frames, and arguments that makesense of the political process.

There is a faulty view of voting behavior – widely held by political strategists on the left – that people already know what they want.

There are two kinds of policy: cognitive and material. Material policies are familiar: they outline

what is to be done in the world. For example, the details of a health care plan, or a plan for getting

out of Iraq. Material policies each have a cognitive dimension, often unconscious and implicit. This

includes the ideas, frames, values, and modes of thought that inform the political understanding of

the material policy.

Progressives have lacked a cognitive policy-making arm. As a result, they try to sell policies on a

case-by-case basis via “messaging,” last-minute PR for the specific policy (e.g., listing polar bears as

an endangered species), rather than developing a progressive worldview that automatically makes

sense of the policy and counters conservative ideas.

When conservatives are in power, they can institute policies that are designed to fail—fail in a way

to support conservative cognitive policies. In short, for conservatives in power, deliberate material

policy failure can lead to cognitive policy success, and hence many strategic successes in the

future