Cross-posted From Patterns That Connect

People often seem to criticize George Lakoff based on their own peculiar misreadings of him.  And it's happened again over at Talk Left, in a guess commentary by Big Tent Democrat, "What Lakoff and Obama Do Not Understand" [Disclaimer: I would much rather be writing about what Obama does and does not understand, but that will have to wait.]  Curiously, Matt Stoller over at MyDD, referred to this as George Lakoff Gutted, but it's more like a fingernail clipping... that failed.

This is a very rambling, rather tangled post, that seems to have two fundamental misreadings of Lakoff at its core:

(1) It misunderstands Lakoff's criticism of issue-based attempts to target voters.  Lakoff's big picture criticism is that it misunderstands how most people think about politics. His little picture criticism is directed specifically at the laundry-list approach to trying win over swing voters.  Big Tent Democrat misconstrues it as Lakoff ignoring single-issue voters.

(2) It misunderstands why Lakoff talks about talking to conservatives.  Lakoff does so primarily because his theory explains two coherent political frameworks, liberal and conservative.  There is no coherent moderate framework.  However, moderates employ both liberal and conservative frameworks.  Thus, speaking to and countering conservative influences is a way to reach both conservatives and moderates.  Big Tent Democrat mistakenly thinks that Lakoff is ignoring moderates in favor of conservatives.

A deeper look at these misunderstandings, and more, on the flip.

There's more...