“I hear some talk that people are trying to decide,” Hillary Clinton said in her closing pitch for Thursday’s debate, “Do they vote with their heart? Do they vote with their head?”
She concluded, “I'm asking people to bring both your heart and your head to vote with you on Tuesday because we have a lot of work that can only come because your heart is moved.”
The phrase “I hear some talk" is key to this carefully constructed statement. Who are the people claiming that the Democratic primary is a conflict between emotional hearts and rational heads?
As it turns out, this hearts-vs-heads talk comes from Hillary Clinton and her supporters.
The narrative was then picked up by the overwhelmingly male political journalistic class, repeated as fact for months.
Notably, both Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton have directly dismissed Bernie Sanders as appealing to the “emotions” of voters — Hillary in September and Bill this February.
So far as I was able to tell, at no point has Bernie Sanders or his campaign engaged with this argument.
This construct — often used to dismiss the preferences of “irrational” women or “emotional” young people — is not backed by neuroscience, which finds that older people and men are just as emotion-driven in their decision-making, because all human decisions are driven by emotions.
The claim that Sanders is the “hearts” candidate makes little sense on its face — he unwaveringly discusses the cold facts of our nation’s economic realities, avoiding emotional appeals. Rejecting the appeal of fear-mongering over Islamic terrorists, Sanders highlights the scientific reality of the civilizational threat of climate change. Sanders grudgingly mentions his family and his own personal biography. The Sanders campaign is built almost entirely on political philosophy, not celebrity endorsements.
The Clinton campaign is pushing this narrative to flip the script — a classic case of misdirection to hide the reality that much of Hillary Clinton’s appeal as a candidate is built not on what voters want and need, but on how they feel a president should look and act like.
The emotions invoked by the Sanders campaign are those of hope, anger, and ambition; those invoked by Clinton are fear and resignation. Political science doesn’t have any reliable way of predicting which candidate is more “pragmatic” or “electable” — those are terms that provide rationalizing window-dressing for decisions driven by fear of uncertainty and change.
In fairness to Clinton, she has to fight an uphill battle against the sexist presumption that women are “emotional” and “irrational” — so her campaign has to thread the needle of presenting her as a rational realist and an emotionally open human. But the primary purpose of the Clintonian “hearts” versus “heads” narrative is to tar hope with sexist, ageist language.
HOW THE CLINTON CAMPAIGN ESTABLISHED THE “HEARTS” FOR SANDERS VS. “HEADS” FOR CLINTON NARRATIVE
Randi Weingarten, 7/30/15:
“Personally, I love Bernie,” said Randi Weingarten, the president of the powerful American Federation of Teachers, which has already endorsed Clinton. “But what we need is we need to win.”
Their hearts are with him. Their heads are with her. [WSH, 8/4/15]
Hillary Clinton, 9/4/15:
Clinton said candidates for president should "not just give a speech for them, not just appeal to their emotions."
Whether organized labor's head or heart prevails is going to mean a lot for just how competitive the 2016 Democratic primary actually becomes. [U.S. News & World Report, 10/9/15]
Poll shows Hillary Clinton wins Iowans’ heads, but not hearts. [NYT, 11/25/15]
The Democrats’ final debate before 2016 voting starts brought clarity to the choice ahead forDemocratic primary voters, in a battle that’s pitting the party’s head against its heart. [ABC News, 1/17/16]
Karen Tumulty, Washington Post, 1/18/16:
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, now in the two-week stretch before the first votes come, are laying down a choice for Democrats: Lead with their heads, or with their hearts.
Russell Muirhead, Dartmouth political scientist, 1/19/16:
“Right now, Democrats are wondering whether to follow their heads or their hearts,” said Russell Muirhead, an associate professor of government at Dartmouth College. “Their heads are very clearly saying vote for Clinton. That’s a responsible vote. But their hearts are saying vote for Bernie.” [ABC News, 1/19/16]
Flores here is speaking for Sanders's optimistic view. She isn't offering an analytical explanation as to why Sanders's political revolution will succeed, but she's tapping into the exact same emotional current that Obama did. [Vox.com, 1/20/16]
Paul Starr,
The American Prospect editor, 1/25/16:
You can’t blame everything on Wall Street, as emotionally satisfying as that may be. [Politico, 1/25/16]
Hillary Clinton, 1/25/16:
Among Democrats in Iowa, the story is often the same: voters torn between former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders say it's about their head battling their hearts. Clinton addressed that conflict when describing her interaction with an undecided voter who said he vacillated between supporting her and Sanders. "Well, you can have it both," Clinton said at an event in Osklaoosa on Monday. "What I have done my entire life... was to do everything to help people who were really up against it — the odds were stacked against them." . . . "Yeah, you need to lead with both your heart and your head. It’s not either or," Clinton said. "You’ve got to take what you hear from people, what they’re telling you, sharing with you, the heartache they’re feeling and you’ve got to roll up your sleeves and get to work and do everything you can to solve the problems that are keeping Americans up at night." [“Hillary Clinton’s answer to Democratic voters torn between their head and heart,” Washington Post, 1/25/16]
Politics is always a mix between emotion and logic. But with two presidential candidates in the Democratic race neatly representing each, Iowa’s Caucuses a week from Monday will test whether head beats heart in the idiosyncratic and critically important process of picking a presidential nominee in the first state to have its say. [“Heart vs. head in Iowa’s Democratic faceoff”, MSNBC, 1/25/16]
Ezra Klein, Vox.com editor, 1/28/16:
As Matt Yglesias wrote, Sanders is "tapping into the exact same emotional current that Obama did." [Vox.com, 1/28/16]
In the Iowa caucus, one Democratic presidential candidate is making an appeal to liberals' heads, the other their hearts. [Washington Examiner, 2/1/16]
“If they vote with their heads it will be Clinton. If they vote with their hearts it will be Sanders.” [NYT, 2/2/16]
Bill Clinton, 2/2/16:
Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, told NBC News on Tuesday that Sanders has built a following among young people because he offers them “emotionally satisfying” promises. [Washington Post, 2/2/16]
Hillary Clinton, 2/4/16:
I hear some talk that people are trying to decide: Do they vote with their heart? Do they vote with their head? I'm asking people to bring both your heart and your head to vote with you on Tuesday because we have a lot of work that can only come because your heart is moved.