How Democrats Can Stop ‘Pandering’

Every other year, Democratic thinkers rediscover the basic insights of framing. Frustration with the party's weak performance leads to deep thinking about how to do things differently. This leads, inevitably, to the power of moral values, language, and how they shape the brain's politics.

The light bulb turns on: Don't copy Republican ideas. Don't move toward the false "center" (which always seems to be further to the right). Don't chase the polls—try to change the polls.

Dr. George Lakoff spent decades laying out these ideas systematically—the moral differences between the parties, the key basics of how the political brain works, the importance of not accepting Republican frames.

Writing for the New Republic, Perry Bacon arrives at many of the same conclusions through the route of practical political strategy. When a journalist covering six presidential campaigns and a cognitive scientist studying moral reasoning converge on the same diagnosis, perhaps there is hope.

Bacon's core argument is that Democrats need to stop treating public opinion as fixed and start trying to move it. (That will sound familiar to FrameLab readers!)

He offers five concrete ways to do this—from using bully pulpits more aggressively to building the kind of civic infrastructure that actually changes how people think about politics. His model case is Zohran Mamdani, who won the New York mayor's race not by chasing polls on crime but by reframing the entire election.

The piece is worth reading in full: "Instead of Pandering, Democrats Should Try Changing Voters' Minds."

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Dr. George Lakoff outlines the major pitfalls of political framing

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