Emotion Trumps Logic in the Voting Booth

By Terrence McNally, AlterNet
Posted on October 24, 2007, Printed on October 24, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/64743/

An August op-ed in Kenya's Daily Nation included this sentence: "The candidates will do well to go out and buy a book entitled The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation, by Drew Westen." Quoting the article's author, Charles Onyango-Obbo, "Westen has studied elections over the years, and found an inconvenient truth: People almost always vote for the candidate who elicits the right feelings, not the one who presents the best arguments."

Closer to home, as Westen points out, the Republicans led by Karl Rove consistently beat the Democrats at playing to the electorate's emotions. All logic points to Republican losses in '08. But logic doesn't vote -- and logic doesn't win elections. Will the Democrats once more snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, or can they finally learn the crucial lesson that hearts lead minds? Drew Westen weighs in.