Let's stop complaining that many voters make their decisions based on intuition and emotion instead of a laundry list of issues, and start using it.
Folks, we can slam our heads repeatedly against the (virtual) wall, bemoaning the fact that many who voted for George W. Bush either a) disagree with his policies or b) are harmed by his policies. Why did they do that? How could they be so "stupid"? Well, because gut feelings and emotions matter - and to many voters, they matter more than issues on a checklist.
You don't like that? You want people to be more like you? Then you're never going to run a successful campaign.
People make decisions in different ways. We're never going to change that. Let's stop with the "my way is better" attitude. Even if you think it is. You are never going to change the way an important slice of the American public (low-information swing/centrist voters) makes its decisions. Stop trying. Instead...
Democrats need to appeal to the emotional voter. The one who's uneasy about Obama as commander-in-chief, because they "don't know enough about him," "don't know if they can trust him." The ones who still think of McCain as a "straight-talking maverick," or who think that the devil they know is better than the one they don't.
After reading and pondering Els' interesting rescued diary about stories, narratives and zeitgeist, I believe it's likely that our minds and memories are hardwired for "stories" and "narratives." It's simply impossible for us to retain crisp, detailed memories of all our experiences for immediate recall. Doesn't it makes sense that we would use key incidents as "markers" to recall some events and people? When we return from vacation we may remember many events of the previous few days, but as time goes on, a few incidents stand out in our minds to represent the rest. Because most of us have limited space in the "immediately recall everything about it" part of our brains.
I think we keep more of what's important and immediate in the forefront of our minds, while relying more on "markers"/samples that represent the whole for things that are less immediate or less important. A "low-information voter" by definition isn't going to keep every scrap of information about a 2-year-long presidential campaign in his/her mind. It may be because (s)he is less of an analytical thinker and more of an emotional one. Or it may be because the campaign isn't important enough; this same voter may be a rabid Chicago Cubs fan and can recite to you the batting average of everyone on the current team, and the litany of World Series misses throughout the last century.
So, left-leaning political junkies remember every John McCain gaffe and are maddened that most voters don't care that he mixed up Sunni and Shia. But keep in mind that most voters don't know the difference between Sunni and Shia. This doesn't break through the noise to resonate with them. It's a "marker" to define John McCain for a slice of voters, but not the majority.
However, for most of us, our homes are viscerally important to us. If we're homeowners, we're worried about the mortgage payment, our property tax bills, our property values. If we're renters hoping to own a home one day, we're worried about mortgage rates and housing costs; if we rent in a hot real estate market, perhaps we're worried about our home being converted into a condo and losing the roof over our heads. That's why I believe "McCain doesn't know how many homes he owns" resonates with people in a way so many other gaffes did not.
And it's why, while we've got to be careful not to overuse it the way the McCain campaign is overusing his POW experience, we need to continue focusing on McCain's "house-counting-gate." This is a marker we need to place in the minds of low-information, emotional voters that represents John McCain for them.
Analytic-thinking people are starting to get tired of Obama hammering at the themes of "hope" and "change." But many of those some people, if they're old enough, probably thought Ronald Reagan's "morning in America" ad was hokey, cheesey and annoying. Election Day, many people were also expecting a close race between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, and it was over at 8:01 pm. There were many reasons, but one big one was that Jimmy Carter was seen as an ineffective, scolding pessimist.
There are analytic-leaning thinkers in this world, and there are emotional-leaning thinkers in this world. Honestly I cannot see how many analytic-leaning thinkers can conclude 4 more years of Republican misrule would be in their interest -- unless they are upper income/corporate types, who have done exceedingly well during the Republican destruction of our economy to benefit the upper-income elite. Bush/McCain have probably lost most of the non-wealthy analytic thinkers. It's the rest who are up for grabs.
Imagery matters, message matters, stories and narrative matter, probably more than analytic thinkers would like. But they do. It's time for Democrats to run a campaign that targets the electorate we have, not the electorate some people we wish we had.