While we are still conducting our postmortem on the reasons for the defeats suffered by the Democrats last week, let's take a view from the field of Cognitive Science. We will be hearkening back to ancient fables, to turn of the (19th to 20th) Century experimental research, and modern science on the political mind.
1. Hope
Like many of you, I received an unending deluge of emails from various Democratic organizations and candidates asking for my support in the form of money. Some days might yield a fresh crop of nearly a dozen when opening the email in the morning, and a dozen more in my other email account.
The message in nearly all of these emails was fear. Said in “Crushing Blow”, “Gut-Wrenching Defeat”, “Complete Loss” or any other combinations of “very bad adjective + very bad noun” the folks at the DCCC or DSCC or Dwhatever could think of.
If we wanted to prevent these very bad things from happening, we had to respond right away with a donation. If we really wanted to prevent these very bad things from happening, we would respond right away with a donation in response to every email, we would make it monthly, and we would leave a tip of 20% for ActBlue's tireless efforts to send these messages of doom.
Then the next day would bring another crop of “DOOM!!!” messages. Seems like the donation you gave the day before wasn't enough to do anything.
And that's the problem. That problem's technical name is Learned Helplessness. It can be found in just about every Introduction to Psychology textbook, but in the boring chapters about rats and pigeons instead of the exciting ones about “all types of crazy” you and your friends might totally have.
Learned helplessness occurs when an animal gets punished regardless of what the animal does. This is a cruel variation on your rat/pigeon/dog in a cage setting. Usually, you put your pigeon in a cage with a metal wire floor and give a signal, like a red light, followed by something bad, like a shock to the feet 10 seconds later. Soon enough, the pigeon is going to learn that when the red light turns on, it should jump 10 seconds later.
Or you can give a signal that will be followed by a shock unless the pigeon learns to do something right after the signal, like pecking at a green spot under the light. Soon enough, that pigeon is going to peck that spot right after that light comes on.
In learned helplessness experiments, a shock is given and signals are given and there are actions that the pigeon can take, just like in the normal learning situation. However, the shock is going to come sometime randomly. It will not matter how long it has been since any signal has been given. It will not matter how long it has been since the last shock. It will not matter what the pigeon does. The pigeon will get shocked.
Now let's look at the fund-raising strategy favored by the Democrats in the past year. We sent an email, and asked to give money to prevent something very bad from happening. If we do it, we are told that the bad thing will still happen, unless we give more money. If we do it, we are told that the bad thing will still happen, unless we give more money. If we do it, we are told that the bad thing will still happen, unless we give more money. If we do it, we are told that the bad thing will still happen, unless we give more money. If we do it, we are told that the bad thing will still happen, unless we give more money.
You see where I'm going. There is nothing that we can do to prevent very bad things from ultimately happening. We don't know how many times we will be asked for money, what specific bad thing is going to happen and when it will happen unless we give more money, or when we will be sent another message proclaiming that we are doomed unless we give more money then and there. Nothing.
So the animal can do nothing to avoid punishment. The animal rolls over and gives up. It's going to get shocked, it knows it, and it can't change it.
A constant stream of emails asking for money to avoid DOOM!!! that will not stop regardless of how many you have already responded to results in learned helplessness.
Or maybe you're the proactive type, like me, and you start looking into Canadian immigration policies instead of sending more donations (hint: forget about Vancouver or Toronto; learn French).
But, most importantly, it says “Why bother voting when the Democratic Party itself has said they won't win a thousand times?”
2. Credibility.
In the alternative (bowlweevils is an attorney as well as a cognitive scientist, and is allowed to do this kind of thing), we take another look at the same never-ending stream of “Pay Now or DOOM!!!” emails.
It's still months and months until the election. How can it possibly be true that a donation in May is the only thing that will prevent DOOM!!! in November?
Or, how can it possibly be true that a donation on May 9 is the only thing that will prevent DOOM!!! in November, when you were told on May 8 that only a donation on that day would prevent DOOM!!! in November?
Or, how can it possibly be true that a donation on May 9 is the only thing that will prevent DOOM!!! in November when you were told on May 8 that only a donation on that day would prevent DOOM!!! in November, and then you get told on May 10 that only a donation on that day will prevent DOOM!!! in November?
Or, how can it possibly be true that a donation at 9:00am on May 9 is the only thing that will prevent DOOM!!! in November, when you got an email at 7:00am on May 9 claiming it was the only thing that would prevent DOOM!!! in November, and you get another email at 1:00pm claiming that it is the only thing that would prevent DOOM!!! in November?
Did DOOM!!! really happen that day you didn't donate? If you stopped for a week, a month, was the sky fracking? Nothing but Fox News all the time, everywhere? Were Koch Brothers lobbyists pounding at your door to force you to give your children revolvers with candy-flavored barrels and hair-triggers?
This starts to sound incredible, not in the sense that you, the donor, hold such awesome power to prevent DOOM!!! But incredible in the “I don't believe you, Democrats” sense. This is the Boy Who Cried Wolf scenario. Who is going to come to the call when it's really, truly, the time for action (September and October) after hundreds or thousands of (at best) exaggerated alarms?
To be technical, we'll call this process “attenuation leading to extinction”. Something that once signaled an adverse consequence if an action was not taken does not deliver that adverse consequence if the action is not taken. The red light that used to signal that a shock was coming in 10 seconds starts to turn on and no shock occurs. When that happens enough times, the signal is no longer considered an indicator of an adverse consequence and becomes ignored.
Or those sending the signal use so many different email addresses that using the "stop subscribing" method is meaningless and you have to block the route sender (DSSS.org) and not the particular sender (weluvpuppies@DSSS.org).
Now you might think that the people you believed in told you lies, so why vote for that pack of liars instead of the other pack of liars?
3. The Brain.
Regardless of whether we have screwed things up via learned helplessness or extinction through attenuation, there is one more recent error to consider. Over the past 50 years or so, research ranging from surveys to timing of responses to words and images, to neural mapping, in hundreds of studies have shown that conservatives can be highly motivated by fear. Liberals are not motivated by fear, generally. Liberals are a bit of a grab-bag when it comes to motivation, but messages that suggest excitement, novelty, and hopefulness are more likely to have an impact on behavior than messages based on fear or insecurity.
Yes, liberals are afraid of the Koch Brothers, Karl Rove, the oligarchy. But liberals are afraid of them because they believe that these people want to restrict choice, force conformity, and run the nation on a basis of fear and insecurity. Liberals want to believe that there are constructive choices that can be realistically enacted that will make things better. They don't want to be told that the Koch Brothers are a nearly unbeatable juggernaut spewing money and hate across the land and they'd better be scared of the consequences of not paying up right here and now and forever. They want ways to beat the Koch Brothers.
4. The End.
In 2014, the Democratic Party became reactionary in its attempts to battle reactionaries. It became a fear-monger to war against the fear-mongers. It became a black hole of greed to combat the black hole of greed. It turned itself into the image of its enemy. This was foolish. That enemy has much greater abilities and much more experience with these tactics. More importantly, if liberals responded to reactionary, fear-based messages, they wouldn't be liberals. They would already be Republicans.
Why did the Get Out the Vote efforts ultimately fail? There are many reasons. But one reason is that the Democratic Party's self-defeatism and unending proclamations of disaster gave would-be voters a reason to stay home. Which is exactly what the Republicans were looking for.