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The All New Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, by George Lakoff. This excellent book presages the rise of Trump and MAGA, as well as the recent general collapse of the Democratic leadership, even though it was published more than 10 years ago, as an update to a book published 10 years before that. The Democrats don’t understand how to communicate. Lakoff points out that the Republicans invested heavily in understanding the psychology of communication, so they know how to put together winning messages, while the Democrats tend to spend their money helping the needy and thus don’t have the same type of think tanks. He hopes his book can help make up the difference, although obviously it didn’t have the impact one might have hoped, since here we are. It’s a quick read, and useful information – I only wish he cited the academic papers on which many of his points are based.

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From:

heleninwales

It sounds like a book our Labour party need to read. They really haven't been doing any positive messaging, so they're just coming over as cruel. I know we got fed up of Boris Johnson and his constant lying and false promises, but surely there's a happy medium?

From:

eve_prime

Oh, that's interesting - our Democrats just come across as weak or boring. I didn't know the Labour party's messaging sounds cruel.

From:

heleninwales

It's actually their policies that are cruel. They removed the winter fuel allowance for all pensioners and made it means tested, so only for the poorest. To be fair, a lot of retired people didn't need it, but it won't have saved much (if any) money because now people have to be assessed and that costs. They've changed inheritance tax on farms and they're now reducing benefits for people with disabilities. They are doing good things as well, but those policies are being overwhelmed by the bad ones and no one knows about them.

It seems that we can't have Prime Minister who is good at both international diplomacy and domestic policy. Starmer had been doing very well with regard to coping with Trump and negotiating trade deals with various countries, but at home he's a disaster.