Democratic primary debates, of which we’ve now had ten, are exemplars of what debates should not be, how not to persuade people to change opinions, and everything wrong with political rhetorical techniques. The Democratic debates become source material in our rhetoric courses for warnings to students. Even if an instructor backs a candidate on these stages, there’s plenty of polling data to suggest the debates have done more to push voters away than to attract support for campaigns.
None of my colleagues would teach “debate” as exciting the people already in agreement with the speaker. That might be the purpose of ceremonial speeches, but not debate. The other tactics used in the Democratic debates — insulting opponents and distorting their records — is unlikely to attract support to a candidate. Research shows that tearing down an opponent in a campaign results in apathy or even disgust. People stop voting.
Where is the persuasion? It’s missing. When candidates do present “plans” they are unrealistic. Moderators of the debates, however, let idealistic nonsense pass with minimal challenge. Again, the idealism merely serves to excite the base, which will be disappointed if things do not come to pass.
What a disastrous series of debates.
Polling suggests the Democrats are borrowing from the Donald Trump 2016 strategy: excite the base, instead of hoping to persuade undecided or lightly committed voters.
Rhetoricians admit, reluctantly, that emotion persuades more than facts or logical reasoning. However, my colleagues and I teach students to frame with emotion while presenting facts and making logical arguments. You use emotion to “hook” an audience, not as your primary rhetorical technique.
Then, students see these debates and observe that logic and reason don’t excite the audiences or move the polling data.
Yes, the moderate Democrats argue they might persuade Republicans and Independent voters, but the frontrunner is Bernie Sanders. His strategy is not moderation. He seeks to excite “people who have never voted.” The problem with that is that recent studies suggest non-voters are surprising similar to voters in their partisan leanings. Surprisingly, researchers found non-voters are not overwhelmingly young liberals.
What the data reveal is that Sanders’ strategy might not be a winning strategy.
Half of Americans Don’t Vote. What Are They Thinking?
Politico | Feb 19, 2020
On Wednesday, the Knight Foundation released the results of “The 100 Million Project,” the largest survey of chronic nonvoters in history, and the most robust attempt ever to answer some of the questions that have long bedeviled political scientists. More than 13,000 people were polled across the country, with special emphasis on 10 battleground states, followed by in-depth focus-group conversations with thousands of them.
In the broadest terms, the study found the average chronic nonvoter is a married, nonreligious white woman between 56 and 73 who works full time but makes less than $50,000 a year. She is most likely to identify as a moderate, lean toward the Democratic Party, get her news from television and to have a very unfavorable impression of both political parties and President Donald Trump. She has a 77 percent chance of being registered to vote and says she doesn’t because she doesn’t like the candidates but claims to be certain she will vote in November. But the study’s real lesson is that averages are deceiving, concealing more than they reveal.
The study confirms that nonvoters as a whole are fairly reflective of the broader electorate in terms of political preferences. If they were to all vote in November, 33 percent say they would support Democrats, 30 percent Republicans and 18 percent a third-party candidate. More surprisingly perhaps, and potentially more consequential for November, these numbers gently tilt in the opposite direction in many battleground states, with nonvoters choosing Trump over the as-yet-undetermined Democratic nominee 36%-28% in Pennsylvania, 34%-25% in Arizona and 30%-29% in New Hampshire. Wisconsin and Michigan mirror the national average, favoring the Democrat 33%-31% and 32%-31%, respectively, while in Georgia the margin is 34%-29%. This data challenges many long-standing assumptions of political experts.
With the above data in mind, Democratic candidates should be persuading the undecided and non-voter, not merely arousing partisan passions.
How do you target non-voters? It turns out that the non-voters want several things the Democratic candidates are not offering (and are even outright avoiding):
- Realistic legislative agendas that might be passed by Congress and signed into law;
- Positive visions for the future, instead of reinforcement of negative views of parties; and
- Acceptance, not condescension, of her values that tend to be moderate and traditional.
The Democratic primary frontrunner surely isn’t offering a realistic legislative agenda, prides his curmudgeon persona, and insults moderation.
The tenth debate was a shout-fest, not a debate. It offered nothing to encourage non-voters, who are not what we have been told they are: young liberals. The fact that most “almost-voters” are older, white, and married should tell Democrats exactly why they are losing the swing states. They truly have lost the white working class.
How are these debates changing that? And what will the general election campaign hold for us? An interesting lesson in poor rhetorical technique. It would not be surprising if instead of record high turnout we had record low turnout in November.
At least we have material for course discussions.